‘Scalability is the heart of long term startups’ – Rohan & Rahul of Dial2Verify

This Entrepreneurial Story is about Rohan & Rahul Am who Founded ‘Dial2Verify’ Located in Mumbai-Bangalore & UK

Founders –

Rohan Am – [  CoFounder & CEO ] B.Pharm, M.Pharm, Perusing PhD

Rohan has been always passionate about new evolvements in Pharma world and bridging the gap between innovations in health industry and its benefits to general public, through a medium of IT Technology. Passionate about research in Pharma world and starting-up tech Startups.

Rahul Am – [ CoFounder CTO ] BE ( Computer Technology )

Passed out in 2010, Rahul worked for an MNC for almost 3 years, His core technology was ‘Business Intelligence’ ( Data-warehousing ) and in parallel he was also experimenting on Php +mysql as a hobby. He has been very much passionate about start-ups and have launched couple of start-ups before, few of which succeeded and others had to see shut door.

Company Name – Dial2Verify – Missed Call Based Customer Verification Platform

When Started: Beta Launch : April 2013, Fully Operational : May 2013

What Motivated you to start your Business?

For project reasons Rahul had to move to Bangalore, almost a year and half back. He noticed the common problem with the mega cities ‘TRAFFIC’. And once again the cause was, ‘every individual using his/her own vehicle for commuting to office’. He thought of availing an easy to use carpooling service, which would not just help commuters in saving on fuel cost, but in cities like Bangalore, your professional network too can grow as on the go.

Here, But problem with carpooling sites would be, commuters would not want to share vehicles with the strangers, unless they find user’s identity is Pre-validated at signup process itself.

The obvious solution for identity verification was,

1. Verify User mobile and

2. Verify User’s Business / Professional email address

For verification of mobile phones, ‘OTP’ was the quickest answer, but at the initial stages of the project, they wanted to cut down every possible cost, even the sms prices. So they did a bit research on every possible alternative and finally came up with the thought of using Missed Call to authenticate user mobile. Later a prototype was built, which worked really great.

Later, The next thought was, ‘Why not avail this as an Open Platform to other web businesses and web developers, who can integrate their platform for implementing user authentication / transaction authorization in their website’, This lead to the start-up idea for Dial2Verify.Com

Tell us about your Business

Dial2Verify.com, The sole purpose behind building Dial2Verify platform was, to provide an easy to integrate API to web developers and web business for building an authentic, clean and trusted customer base. Dial2Verify is an OPEN platform, Web businesses can integrate Dial2Verify services in their website/s for following use cases,

• Signup Verification. Build a clean user base by validating their telephone numbers.
• Lead Generation. Optimize your sales profits by maintaining accurate telephone data
•  Transaction Authorization. Build an alternative to OTP based transaction authorization system.
•  E-commerce Cash On Delivery. Validate user identity before dispatching cash on delivery shipments.

At present, Dial2Verify provides API integration services in India and USA and soon are expanding for AUS / UK / GER / JP / FR / IT.

Developers can quickly generate API key, by giving a missed call to 0-4466-9494-99 OR by using http://sample.code.dial2verify.in/dial2verify_generate_api.dvf

A Detailed documentation of API and FAQs can be located at http://kb.dial2verify.in

References:

1. Front-end business website: http://dial2verify.com

2. API Knowledge base: http://kb.dial2verify.in

3. Geo Expansion News: http://kb.dial2verify.in/news/5/Dial2Verify+Telephone+Verification+API+Going+Global

 What is a Day in a life of you like?

Our day typically is comprised of Analyze, Propose, Build, Scale Up phases; every morning begins with the Analytics on usage of Dial2Verify platform and server statistics, which gives directions to our thoughts on ‘What’s Next’.

Post analyzing aggregated data, We brainstorm on feature development and build planning, surely we give equal emphasis on the Scaling Up Phase. Apart from pure geeky works, we do enjoy fun filled activities at the workplace.

One particular skill you got right and gave you best results.

If I were to say only ONE Skill, then I would rather not choose the technical skill, its moreover the passion to think beyond.

What have been your biggest challenges in running your Business so far?

It is now almost our 3rd start-up, but from the things we have learned so far, I would say, for service oriented start-ups

Biggest challenges are,

• Convincing your client: who is already using some technology ‘X’, to adapt and switch to technology ‘Y’, It is more over linked to the state of mind & the mentality of the business owner.
• Scaling up: To some extent, scaling up is also a challenge. For Dial2Verify ( a B2B business ), usage rate is exponential, What I mean is,

Suppose Website ABC.com plans to adapt Dial2Verify service, and ABC.Com triggers approx 50K API Requests a day, then gaining even 2-3 such customers, would raise the bar to have your infrastructure strong, capable, reliable and scalable enough, to handle 150K requests per day. Now think when API User count grows to 100s or 1000s.

How did you overcome these challenges?

• Convincing Clients: The biggest benefit of ‘Missed call based customer identity verification approach’ to the businesses was, ‘Its Cheaper over the cost of sms’ so we did not really felt much difficulties in convincing our clients. We launched our services back in Apr 2013, and by now we have 40+ Businesses using / evaluating Dial2Verify API Platform.
•  Scaling up: The Main cause for the failure of one of our previous start-ups was, Failure in scaling-up storage / platform. In fact that was our first entry into start-up ecosystem, so limitation of knowledge and missing business plan, were most responsible for the failure

This time, we have focused more on the Technology part and comparatively lesser on the marketing part 😉

What have you found the most effective way to get new clients?

If you own a start-up or any business, I would say, go out of your campus and talk talk talk….talk about your product, talk about your case studies, showcase the benefits, and give projections on savings with the use of your product.

If your target is an Indian audience, then you might want to make your product publicity via 3rd party Review Websites. The impact is certainly different, when someone hears about your service through some referral or through some review website vs. you approaching him personally and explaining the service features. Reviews do work a lot.

What advice do you give to other business owners?

– If you are planning for a long term business, then you must first give more time and importance to formulating your business plan.

– make sure your product / service is as bug free as possible before its final production launch.

– Make yourself easily approachable to your customers. ( Running 24×7 support lines and keeping your customers on hold saying ‘Your call is important to us’ isn’t really a good idea, instead, launch a ticket based support and set SLAs for yourself, follow them too 😉 )

– If you are just starting or already started, then don’t just rely on a single revenue stream for your bread and butter, you never know when your competitor will turn the market.

– Keep innovating, but don’t just launch everything in one shot 😉

– Scalability is the heart of long term startups

– Get in touch with Advisors / Mentors / Industry experts in your area. (Most people think, mentors / advisors would request an equity / consulting fees etc, but believe me, their vast experience and suggestions would definitely pay you back one day )

– While Building your team, do select a RIGHT Co-Founder, one whose waves match with your startup idea and who has a passion for its success.

– Treat your team as your family, it pays off 🙂

How did you keep motivated through difficult times?

In startup ecosystem, with every move you make for stepping up, you tend to face some or the other difficulties. Difficulties might be with the client, with the team, with the services you provide

Or it might be a financial difficulty. The solution to all these problems, lies in your Passion For Your Business, Your networking skills.

learn from your failures, learn to accept facts ( mistakes ) and work on their resolutions, look back for learning, share your problems with other entrepreneurs in your network ( they might have face similar issues and would be in a better position to guide you )

What’s Your Marketing, Funding and Team Building Strategy

While just starting up with a new platform, or product, we focus more on the Technology aspects of it and relatively lesser on the marketing part. ( But obviously, marketing is must )

Dial2Verify is a B2B platform, so we avoided Advert Based campaigns ( as they are more effective for B2C, we feel ). So, to some extent we approached people personally ( but, Later realized, it might appear like spamming, so you people should avoid, avoid spamming if you love your brand )

We provided startup pitches and tips to some of the popular business review sites, review sites tend to pull in more traffic than the Advert campaigns.

While structuring team, everyone wants to have the best coder from the market, we did it in-house. I personally feel, a co-founder / founder should not just be from the Management background, A Technology knowledge is must for your startup success.

Your Achievements

Particularly talking about Dial2Verify, here are some of the statistics, since our Beta launch in Apr, 2013

No of registered businesses (Till Date ): 42 ( Web Businesses Using + Evaluating our services )

No of businesses who have pushed Dial2Verify implementation to Production: 4

Approx API Calls per day: 750-1000

Whats your favorite quote?

Live your passion

Who inspires you?

My failures in past

Do you have a Business Philosophy?

Not as such

Contact links

Facebook   | Website 

More Info

https://www.startupfreak.com/dial2verify-customer-verification-redefined/

Startup Freak wishes Rohan & Rahul, All the Best