Asset Infinity is a cloud-based asset management platform revolutionizing how organizations track, manage and maintain their assets and equipment.
The company was founded by Mr. Romy Chopra– a seasoned professional in the IT industry, who saw the need for a standalone asset management system that was easy to implement and would integrate with any existing ERP system.
Recently, we had the privilege of speaking with Mr. Romy Chopra. In the interview, he shared his inspiring journey, the key to his and Asset Infinity’s success, and how the company navigated the difficulties posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Conversation with Mr.Romy Chopra, Founder of Asset Infinity
Listen to Mr. Romy’s motivating story in his own words!
A warm welcome from SoftwareSuggest Mr. Romy Chopra. What is your success mantra? Something you have followed personally that has helped you in your journey.
The success mantra we follow as an organization and even personally, is very simple: CONVICTION. We must have conviction in our vision, product and the team. You must believe that your product is the best in the market and no competition can beat you. Frankly speaking, we do not see any competition in the market for our product and we also believe that the entire universe is the market and there are not many suppliers who can even meet the requirements. This attitude not only inspires me but the team also remains equally motivated.
How has Asset Infinity equipped itself to deal with the Covid-19 situation better?
It was unfortunate that a lot of people lost their jobs, and almost every business took a hit by Covid-19. However, several organizations, especially product-based organizations, and IT companies, had good business and the same was true for Asset Infinity.
Interestingly and fortunately for us; our product is designed in a manner that brings multiple locations and teams on a common platform. We are completely cloud based and as a product itself, we help manage, monitor and audit assets & equipment even remotely. Like everyone else, we also lost a few customers (Hospitality, Travel) due to the pandemic but at the same time, we gained lots of new customers as well. During the Covid-19 enforced lockdowns, several organizations realized the importance of cloud technology as the need for accessing data from anywhere and business continuity from multiple locations became pertinent. A lot of customers who were earlier relying on or leaning towards on-premise software started adopting cloud-based solutions and this trend benefited us too.
At an organizational level, we have always been tech-savvy and future enabled. The team at Asset Infinity was equipped with laptops, software, applications, and all essential equipment required to work from home. Communication lines, protocols and processes were quickly set up and our team lent its full support in ensuring no customer was left unattended and no balls were dropped on the work front. The systems and processes worked out so seamlessly that even today we continue to work from home and have a team spread across the country.
Our readers are keen to know what prompted you to create Asset Infinity? Tell us about your journey so far.
Through my career in the IT industry, I have managed and seen a lot of ERP implementations. While primary modules like finance, sales, purchase become part of Phase 1 of implementation; the asset management generally takes a back seat and gets pushed to phase 2. Most of these ERPs are so complex that Phase 1 implementation takes forever and Phase 2 generally doesn’t even see light of the day. As a result, asset management modules never get implemented.
Now here is the catch.
Organizations spend huge sums of money on their assets and equipment. Irregular maintenance or improper tracking of the assets causes huge monetary and time loss. For instance, if an organization maintains its asset data on excel sheets and an unfortunate event occurs such as a system being corrupted or an individual responsible for leaving the job; the whole data is lost forever. We realized it was not a problem specific to any one industry but the same across industries. This is where we saw the opportunity to create a standalone asset management system that was easy to implement and would sit nicely with any pre-implemented ERP system.
The journey so far has been rewarding. We have acquired lots of customers across the globe. We currently have active private, government, not-for-profit and community customers in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Middle East, South East Asia, Australia & New Zealand. A lot of large players and brands are our customers. In India, if you think of the top 20 brands, they are all using Asset Infinity.
Not just customers, but along the way, we have also acquired partners across geographies who have local region expertise and assist us in acquiring customers and implementing our solution in client organizations. Partners reassured us of our conviction in the product since these are individuals and organizations with vast experience in the field and they have chosen us over a lot of other options available in the market. Several partners were using some different applications after watching the potential in our software they migrated to our software. The partner network saves us traveling time and other expenses, while ensuring a faster and more collaborative experience for our customers.
Even the product has evolved over the years. Whenever the market threw a signal at us, we quickly absorbed that into our product as an additional feature or functionality. If a customer asked us for a customization and we felt it would be useful for all our other customers as well; we developed and included it as part of our existing offering.
When we started in 2014, we only had asset tracking in mind. The system was supposed to record your asset information, assign it to users and work as a fixed asset register. In some time, we realized there was a huge scope for product enhancement, so we evolved to managing the entire asset life cycle. So apart from asset tracking, asset maintenance was introduced. When we started implementing maintenance modules we realized we need to track consumables, spares, and inventories as they are essential for maintenance. That is how the inventory management module got added.
After that, customers came up to us with a requirement for purchase management so that inventory and asset purchasing can be done in the right way. In this module, a hierarchy of approvals was introduced. The system was configurable enough so that any organization could customize the screens to their use. This module was helpful in purchase order tracking and management.
Moving forward we also added an asset verification & audit module which aided organizations in staying compliant. Users were now also able to make depreciation reports and assets could physically be verified with this asset verification. Users were given the option to perform audits easily with a mobile application as well. While all these modules are integrated, customers can pick and choose to subscribe to specific modules as per their needs.
And that’s how Asset Infinity continues to grow and evolve.
Which features are most valuable in Asset Infinity?
Asset Infinity is a feature packed asset management suite. It offers you almost all the features and functionalities that you would expect from an asset management solution. However, there are a few things that set us apart and we take pride in:
Our application can be easily integrated with other ERP applications or SAP because we have an API based solution. This ensures there are no duplicate entries in the system. It can fetch and pass data to other applications. For example, if you discard any asset through Asset Infinity that entry will be automatically updated in the other applications as well.
We have a Mobile App that is available for both android & iOS. This enables users to check all the transactions, make approval or update data from anywhere even on the go. User geo-location sharing is an option available to ensure compliance with audits and to track users in case of ticketing or helpdesk systems.
Our system is extremely user-friendly compared to a lot of other ERPs that are very bulky and complicated. If any change is required, the customer has to reach out to the service provider to make that change. But in our system, we have empowered our clients as they can do the configuration themselves. A lot of these massive ERPs have a long training and on-boarding cycle. With Asset Infinity you can take a demo or use our online knowledge center and get started in a few hours!
We believe in effective and easy to interpret Data Representation. Users are equipped with tools to create graphs and charts from within the system and don’t need to reach out to our development team for the same. All data is easily downloadable as excel sheets as well.
The system logs the entire lifecycle of an asset. The movement history of an asset lets you know how many times and when an asset has moved to another location, changed hands, been repaired, been under maintenance, and finally when it’s been discarded; along with all associated costs at every stage.
The product is continuously being improved and new features are being added. We have made enhancements both functionally and technically.
Our core mantra is that the system should be easy to use for CXOs and well as the field staff. With this in mind, we keep striving to make the system more and more easy to use. For instance, if a client is currently storing data in an excel and our system has a different format of table for the same data; the user can easily map-out the two tables and the data can be brought into our application easily. This data mapping process which usually takes months in case of large data sets can now be done in just a few days with Asset Infinity.
We know that every business has different processes, so our system is configurable and customers can even customize it as per their needs. In terms of technical upgrades, we have made our system better by making an even more user-friendly interface. Now users can put a filter in every column, define required fields, roles, etc. all by themselves.
Most importantly we are using a Low coding solution making the product very light. The product has very little being controlled at the backend and most of the controls have been given in the hands of the user. Now the customer can change file format themselves or create a new form themselves. All this and more without any assistance.
Where do you see Asset Infinity to greater heights in the next 5 years?
The goals and dreams are ambitious, but so is our conviction in the product and team we have. In the next 5 years, we will be among the top 10 asset management solutions in the world. We aim to replace the old generation, cost-intensive, bulky and non-user-friendly asset management systems. We also aim to become a completely self-serving solution, which means the complete control will be in the hands of our customers right from purchase of subscription to data upload to configuration and then using the system, all by themselves.
Our endeavor in the next 5 years will be to continue to strengthen our support system and keep making the product simpler for end consumption.
Are there any ideological principles that your organization follows to maintain the brand value?
The comfort and peace of mind of our customers is paramount for us.
We take our data security very seriously. We believe we maintain our customers’ data more safely and securely than their own data centers can. We are ISO20001 certified, and we are in the process of getting compliance security of GDPR & SOC2 for data privacy. We keep data encrypted so only authorized users can access data.
We also value our customers’ feedback and if any client has a specific requirement, we provide all assistance needed for the same. We also analyze all specific requirements and evaluate if these could be beneficial for other clients, and if yes, we provide those updates to other clients free of cost.
To ensure complete support and business continuity for our clients, we have a 0 downtime policy. All updates and backups happen in real time and the application is never out of use.
And as mentioned earlier, we continuously strive to make the system as user friendly as possible.
What is your advice to young entrepreneurs?
We’ve all heard people telling us to work hard, but my advice to young entrepreneurs is to work smart. The hustle culture is a thing of the past. You now have to work on finding faster, smarter and more efficient ways of getting things done. Keep things simple, keep organizations flat, stay lean so that pivoting is easy when you spot an opportunity. There is no shame or harm in outsourcing things that others can do better than you. You focus on your core strengths.
Don’t slog too much. Interact a lot- with customers, vendors, peers; that’s where ideas come from. All you need to do is fish-out and implement that one idea which caters to an actual need gap and solves an existing or latent customer problem.
Most importantly, believe in yourself. Have conviction in your idea. If you go out to do what your competitors are doing, you’ll either be eaten by the big fish or end up being one of many. You will at most be as good as your biggest competition but never the best if you don’t do you!
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