Gifted 5 CR cars to employees, drives a second-hand car himself. 1. Born in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, Suresh Sambadnam was always interested in computers. Although he had secured admission to the University of Madras, he never attended college. At 19, he started a small training centre with four computers. 🧑💻 2. Over the next six years, he taught himself software and even invested Rs 50,000 daily from his pocket for a 3-day dBase course. He bought Rs 3000 worth of textbooks after cycling 200 km to Pondicherry as no bookstores existed in Cuddalore. He finally landed a software analyst job at HP in Bengaluru. 💼 3. At HP, he built a fraud-detection solution for Vodafone and got three US patents for his credit. After a tremendous 3 year stint with HP, he led his insurance software team at Silicon Valley-based - Selectica. The boy from Tamil Nadu was now leading US companies. 🙌 4. In 2003, Seletica was acquired by the consulting giant Accenture. Suresh had two options - Join a large tech company or start something of his own. He chose the latter and started a low-code, no-code platform in India. In 2003, Orangescape Technologies began operations. 🎬 5. The idea was simple ⏩Domain experts could build applications without writing code. For the same, he launched a product called Dimension in 2005, but the market was still a decade behind. Suresh pivoted to a "Keep It Simple & Smart Workflow (KISS) model with a new name. In 2012, Kissflow was born. 🚀 6. It integrated with Google I/O as a workflow tool to automate processes within Gmail and Calendar. He worked night shifts from Chennai to match US time zones. But still no clients. He decided to sell code to a third party and downsized the team to 18 employees. But then magic happened. 🪄 7. In 2013, A US-based packaging company paid Rs 3 CR and became the first client. He spent the money on the product and launched Kissflow 2.0 on mobile in 2015. By 2015, it had become one of the easiest workflow automation tools, winning over 1000+ customers. ✅ 8. By 2019, he introduced Kanban boards, allowing users to finish work in 15 minutes. Moreover, it offered a low subscription of 1500$ per month. By 2019, it had reached a revenue of 70 CR and had clients like Pepsi, Domino's, and 10,000 others. 💪 9. Suresh never raised any VC money to scale and even bought back the 8 CR he raised in 2012 from angel investors. By 2023, he had shifted to AI data mapping and had worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Airbus and Reckitt Benckiser, and his revenue had grown to 220 CR. 📈 10. Today, Kissflow clocks annual revenue of 765 CR and works with 10 lakh customers from 160+ countries across Asia Pacific, Latin America and even the Middle East. 🌎 ➡️But the best part is that Suresh gifted the BMW 5 series worth 1 CR to five employees who have been with him for over 10 years. But he drives a second-hand car. 🙏
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