CryptoESIGN

Expanding your business or giving it a new direction is indeed a challenging task. It requires much thought and expertise, along with capital and planning. However, a great many firms fail to do so in the absence of proper mentorship. As a result, their growth is stunted, and their potential is wasted.

Even today, there is a severe dearth of business consulting services globally, which prevents some great ideas from seeing the light of the day. Thankfully, companies like Sathguru offer strategic assistance to such emerging firms, helping them grow and manage their affairs skillfully. 

Sathguru has been providing management consulting services for over three decades and has forayed into cloud-based custom ERP development for a wide range of business verticals. We are fortunate to have interviewed Mr. Ragu Kannan, the Co-Founder and Director of Sathguru Management Consultants, and know about his mission, vision, and journey so far.

In Conversation with Mr. Ragu Kannan, The Co-Founder and Director of Sathguru Management Consultants

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

A warm welcome from SoftwareSuggest, Mr. Kannan. Our readers are keen to know what prompted you to create Sathguru? Tell us about your journey so far.

Sathguru was co-founded by me in the year 1985 with the objective of providing strategic management consulting services towards the incubation of new enterprises and growth support to existing enterprises. Over the years, Sathguru has transformed into a thought leadership position in the segment of Life Sciences and commands a premium consulting position.

In the early ’90s, we were pained to see the customization in general ERP products that went towards customizing for specific verticals. That provided the thought process that vertical ERP products are the ultimate winner wherein industry depth and fitment will be vividly echoed to the customer. 

We embarked upon building vertical ERP products and built over the years, three products of repute, one for the Retail industry known as Retail ViVA, one for Sugar manufacturing known as SugarCube, and another for textile yarn manufacturing known as Yarena.

In the year 2020, Sathguru spun off its software product into a separate subsidiary by the name of Sathguru Software Products Private Limited to limit itself to offer “cloud only” products on a SaaS basis. With that, it launched its first SaaS product CryptoESIGN (www.cryptoesign.com) in late April 2021 and launched an SMB retail ERP product called Retail ViVA Lite (www.retailvivalite.com) in July 2021.

Sathguru software has four more products under launch in the next three months, including our flagship Retail ERP product known as Retail ViVA (www.retailviva.com)

What is your success mantra? Something you have followed personally that has helped you in your journey.

Focus and perseverance are the mantras that were followed. The ERP products took a long time to build, and the integration of multiple modules throws open many challenges.

We had our focus set to develop ERP products that can provide enterprise-wide digitization and not just core modules. Most enterprises digitize their core, but the support modules drag the efficiency of core modules to a minimum. The consulting background helped us to understand the drivers that are critical to enterprise success and our software products are designed from that mindset.

The second mantra was to teach our great associates how to ideate rather than how to write code. Being in the space of innovation consulting, we feel we have done that very well. At Sathguru Soft, we mold them to ideate, and then the result is good software products.

Can we get a sneak peek at the work culture at Sathguru?

We are a “Great Place to Work” certified organization five years in a row which itself speaks about the work culture. Moreover, we improved upon the employee trust score every year over the last five years which again speaks of the positive work culture that Sathguru provides.

We are a lean organization wherein everyone is given equal opportunity and access to everyone. The empathy is high at every level to understand the other and react to situations. If there is something that I am proud of as my first achievement in Sathguru, it is our work culture. Our innovation of software products comes next to me. People matter the most, and that vibration can be felt all across the levels in Sathguru.

How has Covid-19 impacted your business, and what is your strategy moving forward in the new normal?

Covid-19 gave us some new thinking when life came to a standstill. Like any other organization, we have to learn and unlearn a few things, quickly build resilience and bounce back. We probably felt the impact for a couple of months, but otherwise, life was as usual, and innovation continued without any sign of Covid-19.

I am fortunate that our team could adjust to the new normal pretty soon, just within two weeks, and settle down to continue their great contribution. We took measures to vaccine all our associates and their families at our office, and now we all are back to the office, enjoying our bonding as hitherto.

Tell us about the biggest learning you have gained from your journey so far.

Take calculated risks if you are doing something long term, like building large ERP products. Get your fundamentals right if you are building something long-term.

Get to see the future of the market through structured analysis if you are building something long-term. See immediate opportunities if you are building something short-term. Adopt speed to market if you are building something short-term.

Where do you see Sathguru in the next 5 years? How do you strategize for the same?

With six SaaS products, three mid-market vertical EPR products, and three small products on the cloud and aiming to release our No-code platform in about six months, we are excited about being a multi-product SaaS company in the market.

In the next five years, I see Sathguru Soft having about 20+ products offered internationally and capturing the top quadrant market position in at least three of our products. We have drawn our five-year plans during the Covid-19 time and are pursuing that with full vigor. Our long-standing ERP product development focus will help us to get there.

Since Sathguru is a pure-play product company, not having done a penny of service in its life ever, its focus is clear. We will pursue our goals with perseverance and achieve our set goals in glory.

What motivates and strengthens you to keep up with the competition?

We are very close to the industry, being from a management consulting background. We see ground realities more quickly than the competition and able to visualize what is the ideal ideation required to solve customer problems.

This strength of ours keeps us motivated. The ideation gene imparted in our associates keeps us motivated. Every day they come out with fantastic ideas, and I wish we had more than 24 hours in a day to achieve every idea to practice.

We always have 300+ ideation ideas in the pipeline, which shows the strength of our ideation mindset. We are confident we will find a place for ourselves due to our advisory background whatever the competition be

What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs starting in this field?

Build long-term sustainable products in building blocks while securing yourself with small products for immediate sustenance. Pursue your passion against all odds, and you will hit success for sure.