New Delhi, Nov 9 (KNN) Started in 1999 as a start-up venture and now a successfully  established business, Navsoft.com still embraces a vision to climb another ladder of success.  

In our exclusive interview with Priyanka Rungta, the Founder-Director & CEO of Navsoft Technology,  to learn more about the venture.

Navigators Software (Navsoft) deals with web application development having most of the client based out of India.

Rungta was 24 years old when she started with her innovative project.

“There was no internet connectivity in those days,” said Rungta adding, “I was into technology, and planned to do that would come in lane after 10 years. That was the motive I started with”.

Though successfully established today, Navsoft did suffer in its initial phase of operation. “In those days, clients didn’t understand the need of web applications. It was difficult to convince them of our services and the need for the web application development,”Rungta told us.

She also told us that there was a lack of talent in the market. “Internet and web applications weren’t prevalent then.  There were very few people working in the sector. It was very problematic to find talented developers,” she said.

Customers are the key to business in service sector. Their opinions are influential enough to change the course of a business. And it quite happened to Navsoft.

“Perception of the customers was quite a challenge for us,” the CEO told us. “People didn’t value the revolution in the industry. They were not ready to open up to new ideas,” she added.

This forced the company to shift the customer base to countries like US and UK, acquiring many clients abroad.

“Also, the only connection to the technology we had was through dial-up broadbands, and then came modems.” The founder said, “And on top of that, BSNL was the only provider of internet technology and the weak connection was a big problem. All the time, one person had to be in the BSNL office to make sure that the line is brought up.”

Navsoft presently has 1000 clients over 33 countries across the world including fortune 50 companies like Standard Chartered and Citibank.

The enterprise has a bubbling talent pool of over 350 Professionals including developers, visualizers, team leads and architects. Surprisingly, Navsoft is bootstrapped from its establishment till now and had never acquired money from any investors. “We work really hard to raise money and put that money in developing business. We never acquired any funds from others,” the entrepreneur said.

Having successfully established with Navsoft, the founder is now on her way to develop another start-up project under Navsoft called as ‘BoostMySale’.

“BoostMySale builds and manages online businesses for online retailers,” Rungta told us during the interview. She further elaborated about the product saying “Businesses can choose Boost, a SaaS application that covers the entire e-Commerce lifecycle and push their products automatically on to leading marketplaces such as Ebay and Amazon as well as create their Facebook stores. It allows users to promote products on Twitter and other social platforms. All of this from one place, the most easy to use interface ever.”
Along with providing solutions, BoostMyScale also manages the firm’s inventories, warehouse and logistics.

Though Navsoft is currently based in prime cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, it plans to expand beyond the boundaries of the country. “We are planning to set up our office in Dubai,” Rungta said.

The company also plans to open more offices in Delhi and Kolkata. It is seeking to hire natives in its new offices to acquire local support for a better customer understanding.
Talking about the government support, the founder believes that the policies drafted by the government are making it rather difficult for the start-ups to survive.

“We have to pay service tax at every level in spite of the fact that client don’t pay us,” Rungta said.

“They also expect us to file returns on even Rs 100, which is a very cumbersome task,” she added.

The founder also believes that the condition of logistics and infrastructure is very poor in India.

The CEO also talks about the problem with credit card payments in India. “With secured 3D and OTP, credit cards can’t be charged. We have to call up the clients over and over to ask them to pay which is very cumbersome task. It is not so outside India,” she said.

“Maybe these all are the reasons start-ups aren’t growing fast in India,” she further added.

The only help we get, said Rungta, is from NASSCOM and private ventures like Google and Dell. (KNN/ J)