Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Koushik Mondal: The journey started with our sister company ioTech Designs, where we build solutions for our clients. We saw that there is no technology solution for vending machine operators, they were still using the traditional way of managing their business. We saw a great opportunity here to build a solution for them.
Initially what started as a project has now become a company, and we are receiving great response from the vending industry.
Great Companies: What are the various services provided by Vendify Pvt Ltd
Koushik Mondal: We provide SaaS on a monthly subscription basis, with which anyone can manage their whole vending business.
Great Companies: What makes Vendify Pvt Ltd different from hundreds of other similar service providers?
Koushik Mondal:
There are players in the vending industry who operate vending machines and are also trying to build the technology, but they are failing to do so. That is where vendify comes in because before us and to date there is no service provider who only provides technology without entering into vending machine operator business.
Great Companies: What were the struggles and challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
Koushik Mondal: The challenging part was that every client had a different requirement, hence we broke product into different modules and made an agnostic solution.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Vendify Pvt?
Koushik Mondal: Currently we are growing at a very good pace, and we will continue to do so. After 2 more years, we are expecting at least 60 to 70% of the Indian vending machines will be managed through our platform. And then we will launch our product in the US market because as India has grown in digital payments the same revolution is yet to come in the USA.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Koushik Mondal: We have built a product with a very high-tech feature which a vending machine operator might not need as of now. Hence initially it was a waste of time for us, as we gained more and more knowledge of the industry our product came out better.
Take away: While building a product we all have our own imagination of how the product will be, but it should be considered whether it is actually required by the industry or not.