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Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Ayyappa Pindi : Pyramids are my passion, I always had a different equation with Pyramids and it's power. Being an IT professional, I worked a lot many years, until the day I decided to follow my passion which are pyramids. They have a special connection with me. I have experienced pyramid energies with meditation a lot in my daily life, which transformed my life completely, & i want others to experience it's amazing powers too, so I am on a mission pyramid earth & will continue following it. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by 51Pyramids Ayyappa Pindi : 51Pyramids is an E-Commerce company, which deals in highly energized Spiritual tools, uniquely handcrafted, ranging from plastic, aluminium, copper, wood, crystals with different shapes. Also we provide Spiritual books, crystal spheres, natural crystal bracelets.. every product has its own unique property , best to serve human kind for more better balanced future. Great Companies: What makes 51Pyramids different from hundreds of other eCommerce platforms? Ayyappa Pindi : 51Pyramids is a company with all its heart on sleeves, our team is highly dedicated because everyone is crazy about pyramid, and have experienced it's power, its their passion as well,so they work in and out for whatever it takes to reach people around the world and make them experience the same. Our Products are 100% genuine and our Team is rock solid team, which effortlessly runs the platform. Customers are our family whatever it takes for their efficient service is what our main priority. Our team, service and pyramids makes a good strong difference is what I feel. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Ayyappa Pindi : Every struggle happened and happens in my life, I see it as lessons for my next step evolution. I enjoy struggles and so my team does. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for 51Pyramids? Ayyappa Pindi : When Pyramid is the core USP of the company and more over the reason behind 51Pyramids is the motive "To take pyramids all over the globe", the intention is pure is what makes it stand different. I am sure, our mission pyramid will be growing through out and reach each and every human on the planet one day. I see at least one pyramid in one home, this is where I see 51Pyramids down the line. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Ayyappa Pindi : Believe 100% in what you want to do and start doing. Be a doer and don’t take advices from people who never tried something big in life. Follow your intuitions rather than mind. Success will follow.

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Ramaswamy Hariharan : I have long experience of over 22 years in product design and development. I strongly feel there is always a need of fresh companies to compete on the quality deliverables and can sustain if we match the market requirements. That's how I started this journey. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by HARVEL Systems Ramaswamy Hariharan : HARVEL Systems is an ISO 9001:2015 certified Technology services organization focused in Embedded Hardware and Software Turnkey Design Services. We specialize in providing Integrated solution for developing Innovative products or systems in the areas of Industrial automation, Medical and Embedded Computing application domains. HARVEL Systems provides comprehensive Engineering design services involving Embedded Hardware, PCB, FPGA, Software development. Great Companies: What makes HARVEL Systems different from hundreds of other electronic product design services providers? Ramaswamy Hariharan : The main point is the commitment the team at HARVEL systems has and we always aim to go one extra mile. Our engineers are appreciated by our customers and we win many a time critical projects. Our repeated customers list shows we do have a satisfied customers. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Ramaswamy Hariharan : We faced enough struggles and challenges most of the start ups face especially without any major investors its a real challenge. We enjoy facing challenges as its a known fact and tries to stay in the race. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for HARVEL Systems? Ramaswamy Hariharan : HARVEL Systems will become the market leader in Technology services focused in Embedded Hardware and Software solutions. HARVEL Systems will be a preferred reliable Design partners for the customers worldwide. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Ramaswamy Hariharan : Entrepreneurship is a fine journey, every one must experience it with passion. After a focused effort of certain duration, the result will make you smile and feel satisfied. Webiste : http://www.harvelsystems.com/

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Nidhi Maitrya: Almost a decade ago, I began a lifelong journey of self-employment by any means necessary. I never planned to be an entrepreneur; I just did not want to work for somebody else. My first Internet start-up was called Her connect – an online social-networking platform for women to discuss anything under the sun. I tried to work on it while being employed elsewhere, but I could not provide the focus and determination it deserved to get it moving. The portal never earned me any money, however it made me realize something much more valuable than money: ‘freedom’ I learnt how freedom is connected to responsibility, and how I can combine my desire for independence with something that earns me a living as well as crafts a life of purpose. Since that day, I have imagined a life where all my time is spent on things I really want to do. Imagine giving your greatest attention to a project you create yourself, instead of working as a cog in a machine that exists to make other people rich. Insurance Gurukul was conceptualized in the dining hall of our home and has ever since grown to become what it is today. This was at the time when I was preparing myself for the Fellowship Exams conducted by the prestigious Insurance Institute of India. The biggest challenge for me was to prepare for these exams in the little time left after office hours. So I went online and did some research to find courses that could train me for these exams. To my surprise, I could not relate to a single player who was providing dedicated and organized learning kits for these professional exams. And one fine morning I told myself that “Today is the final day of me working for anyone other than myself” and thus, the journey started. Insurance Gurukul now aspires to become the “one stop destination” for all Insurance related e-training. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Insurance Gurukul? Nidhi Maitrya: We were the pioneer portal in the Industry to provide self-learning test series for students writing Insurance Institute of India exams. Today we are a 15000+ students company having our hold across 7 countries with 40+ modules on our website created with the help of content partners spread across the globe. We also associate our brand proudly as an Education partner with Chartered Insurance Institute, UK – an internationally reputed brand in the Insurance domain, counselling and helping students select the right courses to achieve their career goals. Great Companies: What makes Insurance Gurukul different from hundreds of other Insurance Training Institutes? Nidhi Maitrya: I have never really thought of it that way and or have put any extraordinary effort trying to be different from others. Sometimes “Doing nothing” does “Everything”. But yes, our exceptional and prompt customer – centric approach seems to be working for us. Our marketing spends are just 8% of our total revenue and our major clientele till date is only through word of mouth. One client refers another and we have 15000+ happy students registered with us today. For me, value comes about when someone takes action on something they love to do anyway. With a corporate stint of over 5 years in the core underwriting teams across Insurers and after being a Pan-India topper for Insurance Institute of India exams, the value that we created through this portal for the clients came very naturally to me. The conditioning, experience and understanding on how to crack these exams ended up transforming this project in a proper business model. We boast about an average of 85-90% pass percentage for students preparing for III Exams through our portal. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Nidhi Maitrya: Exploring the art of working with freelance content partners has been a challenge for us. We have made some progress but we are still learning as the dropout rates are very high plus the negotiation on remuneration gets tricky since there are no benchmark rates set for this industry. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Insurance Gurukul? Nidhi Maitrya: You’ll need to check with us after 5 years! But definitely, better use of AI and technology are on the cards. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Nidhi Maitrya: To start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional. Yes I heard it, but the money you have is enough. There is no rehab program for being addicted to ‘freedom’. Once you‘ve seen what it’s like on the other side, good luck trying to follow someone else’s rules ever again! Having said that, work still is only a PART of my life, life in entirety is much more than that. P.S I was truly blessed to have my husband, Apuarv and family walk beside me on this journey. They truly heard me when I first discussed this venture with them. I was about to leave a well-paid job and start from scratch, not sure how it will shape up. Infact, there were moments when they believed in me more than I did in myself. Their support is imperative to what Insurance Gurukul has to offer today and what it can become in future.

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Sowmya Krishnamurthy : During my corporate working days, I realised that I wanted to be a social entrepreneur and start a business in an area that facilitates our economy in which the people involved grow collectively. As a designer at heart the area that drove my passion in wanting to be an entrepreneur was – Handicrafts & Toys. The talent & skills available under handicrafts in rural India is in abundance! AATIKE was started with a passion for design to manufacture sustainable & natural products “MADE FROM INDIA”. Our Vision is to create a platform that brings together all the artisans and help them expand their business from micro to large scale. Great Companies: What are the various products and services provided by AATIKE Sowmya Krishnamurthy : AATIKE Designs and manufactures toys, home & office decor products and specializes in Indian Toys for Pre-School Children and hope on having an impact by Design on Society. Great Companies: What makes AATIKE different from hundreds of other wooden toy manufacturing firms? Sowmya Krishnamurthy : AATIKE brings together various artforms available in the cottage industry. Our products are handcrafted by rural artisans from India. All our toys are carefully designed and crafted from locally available sustainable natural materials with a lot of care to enhance a child’s learning, safety in usage and most importantly be FUN. Importance is given to sourcing of materials locally following stringent quality processes as per CE certifications. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Sowmya Krishnamurthy: We constantly face difficulties both on the business front as well as in the areas of manufacturing. This is a highly unorganised sector and manufacturing large scale units is a challenge. Customers are very price sensitive and AATIKE products are handcrafted, it is a challenge to match the price points of machine-made toys available in the market. Due to pandemic, online sales channel has taken precedence over modern retail, hence our marketing spends to gain visibility has increased tremendously impacting margins. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for AATIKE? Sowmya Krishnamurthy: Despite various challenges we have faced over years including Pandemic, AATIKE has been able to successfully overcome its challenges. We are one of the very few companies who have managed to grow even during the pandemic times. We plan to expand our business by including more rurally available artforms and work towards creating a platform which brings together all the artisans and artforms from India in the field of toy making. The Government of India has taken a large-scale initiative to promote handcrafted Indian toys, we hope that we gain good visibility through their initiative which will enable us to expand our business in international markets. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Sowmya Krishnamurthy: I would also like to urge the new start-ups to work towards building products that encourage rural entrepreneurship which in-turn will help in building economically strong India. Being an entrepreneur has its own challenges and rewards. One must face the challenges with a strong mind to embrace the rewards – When the going gets tough, only THE TOUGH gets going!

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Every technology-driven industry goes through the phase of novelty and complexity, followed by a period of simplification and commoditization. However, with regards to the security industry, it appears to be heading in a different tangent - with new technological areas, products, and players emerging each year, further complicating the market. This leads to the industry getting divided into the world of haves and have nots - where the Top 10% of the customers have all the resources while the remaining struggle to understand the basics of what, why, and how of technology. Sequretek was born in 2013 to bridge this gap, with a mission to “empower our customer’s growth without fear as their trusted security partner by simplifying security”. We work towards removing the fear of security threats attached to digital transformation and making security simple and affordable for them, both being extremely vital for our customer’s growth. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Sequretek At Sequretek, our approach is three-pronged- leading with our technology i.e. device security, user behavior and enterprise security visibility. Our products and services help our customers deal with any potential cyberattack in real-time. With WFH and data centers moving to the cloud, the traditional perimeter defense concepts are becoming irrelevant. It is the user access and devices interacting with the company that need to be defended. In a traditional setup, a company will have to purchase over 8-12 individual security technologies in order to moderately secure their environments. However, most customers do not have the financial bandwidth and understanding to procure the right offerings. Sequretek products offer cutting-edge technology solutions (with inbuilt AI) for next-generation threats. The combination of Percept EDR (Endpoint Detection, Protection and Response) and Percept IGA (Identity, Governance and Administration) along with Percept XDR (Managed Detection & Response) gives enterprises a consolidated view of their security with supreme ability to detect, manage and respond to next-generation threats. Our range of products include - Percept IGA: Percept IGA is the cloud-native offering for identity & access management of users. Percept IGA reduces access risks & ensures compliance to your regulatory requirements. It provides an easy-to-use, scalable and federated identity-based solution to meet end-to-end access governance and administration needs for organizations. It is used for defining access as per various parameters of employees, their managerial seniority, job profile location-based access etc. The primary challenge it addresses is ensuring that for every individual (employee /contractor) that exists in the company, access to any technology privilege such as applications, shared folders, printers, network, the internet is commensurate with the role, and any change in the role which should have an impact on the privilege would be addressed immediately. Percept EDR: Percept EDR is an intelligent, easy-to-manage, simple-to-deploy product that works efficiently in heterogeneous environments. Percept EDR uses AI-ML and endpoint detection and response (EDR) telemetry analytics for enhanced detection capabilities. It is one of the very few products that features on-agent AI ensuring that devices stay protected even in an offline mode. It provides a real-time defense against zero-day threats, advanced persistent threats, ransomware attacks, and any other malicious activities. Beyond advanced threat protection, Percept EDR also integrates components such as device control, application whitelisting, and vulnerability management into a single product with a single dashboard view over your endpoint security. Percept XDR: Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is becoming the need of the hour for companies across the globe. The ever-increasing threats in the form of corporate espionage, state-sponsored cyberattack or hackers trying to steal info to sell in the black market, has given reason to many companies to come up with a security strategy where a threat can be identified before it causes damage and monitoring should be near real-time. Percept XDR ensures end-to-end security, threat detection and response while allowing enterprises to focus on their core business growth without the fear of compromise. Percept XDR helps to protect against phishing, ransomware, malware, vulnerability exploits, insider threats, web attacks and many more advanced attacks. Percept XDR has an ability to ingest data from various sources, uses AI and Big Data to detect threats. It’s ability to ingest sensor telemetry, logs, and global threat intelligence feeds allows the AI detection engine to identify new use cases and anomalies, thereby detecting new and unknown threats. We believe that the market we are addressing is currently underserved and our approach of offering simplicity, ownership of outcomes and affordable subscription-based services makes us uniquely positioned to be a preferred choice for our customers. Great Companies: What makes Sequretek different from hundreds of other Cybersecurity firms? Cybersecurity is a highly competitive industry with many companies providing a range of services focused on addressing limited cybersecurity issues. In order to stay ahead of the curve in this extremely dynamic and demanding cybersecurity sector, we at Sequretek believe in continually raising the bar. Due to rapid digitization and WFH, there is a rising need for a full life cycle management of enterprise security that will detect, investigate, protect, respond, heal and prevent possible future cyber-attacks. Sequretek’s AI- and ML-driven technologies ensure that our customers are armed against all threats, known and unknown; and drive down the cost of ownership. The key ingredient to our approach is enhanced visibility into the enterprise: you cannot secure what you cannot see. Improved visibility on the cloud means precise, actionable intelligence as well as more efficient and proactive management of resources - the best competitive edge businesses require in today’s marketplace. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Building a company from scratch always comes with its own set of challenges. No doubt we also did face certain challenges. Whether in terms of finding a voice for ourselves in the crowded market dominated by biggies, or identifying the right talent who could become part of our product centric journey or raising capital at the right moments to meet our growth aspiration. A common denominator for all of the challenges above is to create trust with the constituents who you are dealing with, the founders bring a certain credibility in the industry that formed the nucleus around which a strategy for addressing each of the challenges was formed, as I mentioned earlier initial customers came through our personal connects and relationship. As far as people are concerned, most of our management team comprises of individuals with whom we have some common connect, this allowed us to ensure that the ethos of founders is widely shared, they in turn ensured that the larger team gets built with the same ethos. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Sequretek? Much like all commercial organizations our financial aspirations revolve around revenue and growth, but the biggest impact that I believe Sequretek can make is to be true to our vision to “simplify security by consolidating the landscape”. This will make technology more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses while also making the world a better and safer environment for digital interactions by offering cutting-edge technologies. In the next five years Sequretek wants to: Make world a better and safer place for digital interactions through delivering cutting edge security technologies Employ over 2,000 people. Protecting more than 2M+ endpoints across 1000 enterprises. Revenue in excess on USD 50 Million. The biggest IT security company in India and among top 100 globally Sequretek will have: Equal opportunity employment environment Well defined governance model that will enable ethical business practices and sound fiscal management High performance culture that fosters innovation, transparency and collaboration among our employees and extended ecosystem Agile business processes to adapt to changing business environment Technology innovation will be core to Sequretek ethos. All innovations will be with an aim to simplify security for enterprises and consumers, thus creating safe experiences in digital economies. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? There will be failures in your journey as an entrepreneur, but entrepreneurship is more about how quickly you learn from your failures. I too have failed, but I don’t remember any of the failures which did not teach me a lesson. From my point of view, having a co-founder with you, having a person who has spent a considerate amount of his time in that specific industry that you choose to dive in will ease your task as an entrepreneur. There are enough mentors available in industry who have experience and have actually built startups, from whom you could advise help. I too will be happy to guide any of the individuals reading this article.

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business Mamta Rupesh : Actually, I was unaware that I could start a business. I worked in a couple of schools Teaching Maths, Science, and Social Science. I could see students showing more interest in other subjects when compared to Mathematics. Students used to literally run away from Maths Classes. I tried my maximum to keep them engaged, but as a teacher, I need to see Student's interest too, we shouldn’t pressurize them as they have Maths Phobia. I realized one day I could teach them Vedic Math with easy methods of calculation, and I became fascinated with the subject and learnt it from scratch. Students got fascinated with the simple tricks too and they were able to score well and learn Vedic math with confidence. Thanks to the amazing tricks taught by Swami Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji, who is regarded as the father of Vedic Maths. I have a 3-year-old baby girl and she had a burn injury and my entire focus turned towards her. Over a period of time I didn’t know what to do and then realized what boosted few students in a class, could boost and benefit others across the world if thought Vedic Maths Online. That's how I ended up teaching Vedic Maths. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by The Vedic Maths Mamta Rupesh : Vedic Maths is a small niche and very peculiar if learnt and practiced well. With my past experience in teaching, I understand what students need and that helped me to build a RoadMap with a list of courses. Starting from: Beginners Guide To Vedic Maths Multiplication Mastery Division Mastery Fractions HCF & LCM Squares & Cubes Vedic Maths Tricks & Competitive Papers School Syllabus ICSE/ CBSE/ State Following the RoadMap and practicing it well daily will help students pass on Maths phobia. We have over 5000+ students who have enrolled in our courses and follow the RoadMap as and when I continue to launch new courses. Also, we provide, Lifetime access for all the courses Course Completion Certificate Bonus Chapters Vedic Maths Community Quiz Questions Pdfs after every chapter. Great Companies: What makes The Vedic Maths different from hundreds of other Education firms? Mamta Rupesh : I don’t do everything that others do, to put it in other words, I focus on one subject “Vedic Maths”, and I deep dive into it to generate as much value as possible. We have a proper Roadmap for our courses and also have a Vedic Maths Community on a separate platform that is not linked with any social media platforms because I don't want kids to get diverted. Where most others don't provide all of these. Vedic Maths Course is applicable for students from grade 3 - 12, writing competitive exams, and added Advantage with Certification for Parents and Teachers to learn and teach their own kids or tutor Vedic Maths Online or Offline for an Extra Income Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Mamta Rupesh : As I'm a mother of a 3-year-old kid, I need to take care of her completely and along with managing Vedic Maths, I work late at night after putting my kid to sleep. Because when it comes to courses, I need to record them with peace of mind and complete silence. I faced a lot of Hardships, lack of sleep and I somehow wanted to give justice to my work and tried my best to give my 100% and now I proudly say I have proved it. Teaching is a service, so every day is a challenge because I see different types of students, each with their own set of questions and doubts, and we must be prepared to handle them. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for The Vedic Maths? Mamta Rupesh : We now know that Vedic Maths is achieving new heights, but that isn't enough; we intend to start and expand globally. We have very enthusiastic parents and teachers, both Indian and international, who are eager to enroll in our program and desire one-on-one instruction. As a result, I will begin giving live classes in the near future. And last, 5 years from now, I intend to begin teaching a school curriculum that will minimize the cost of home tuitions. Due to this pandemic, everything is online, so we have planned to teach Vedic Maths along with the school curriculum which will have a good reach. For individual grades, I'm planning to record notes, where this can be used as a ready reckoner. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Mamta Rupesh : To begin, concentrate on a particular niche; numerous challenges will arise; simply ignore them and do your best in everything you do. Do it with joy rather than force. We are in the field of education, thus we must first be patient. Show students that you care about them, and they will naturally gravitate toward your teaching and the subjects you choose. Website: https://www.thevedicmaths.com/ Course: https://www.thevedicmaths.com/course Email: info@thevedicmaths.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/thevedicmathss/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevedicmaths/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbVqW7mZivSkZ0SSNwvWVoA Podcast: https://www.thevedicmaths.com/podcast

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Hasan Kakal : I love travelling to off beat destinations. More so , on my bike. Most of my travel is to places where you will generally not find any tourists. I did a trip to Ladakh in 2016 on my bike and realised there is so much to experience in life which people haven't experienced. I soon left my job at Kantar TNS and started Bikester Global with Atikulla Merchant with an idea to take people to unexplored destinations. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Bikester Global Pvt Ltd Hasan Kakal : We started with providing fully organised guided motorcycle tours in India and beyond. One can discover, compare and book their preferred motorcycle tour directly from our website. At present, we also have an online store where bikers can shop their favourite riding gear like helmets, jackets, gloves, etc. and other motorcycle accessories. Great Companies: What makes Bikester Global Pvt Ltd different from hundreds of other Travel and Ecommerce firms? Hasan Kakal : Since we are a team of passionate bikers, we know best what bikers need. On the travel front, we do not just provide you a travel package that takes you from point A to point B, but ensure that we curate an experience that you will remember forever! On our ecommerce division, we have the largest collection of brands where one get to choose from making it a a go to website for riders. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Hasan Kakal : Travel industry on the whole has seen a lot of ups and downs in the last year due to the pandemic. We had to deal with frequent cancellations and modifications of tour plans due to this. On the ecommerce side, dealing with logistics is still a huge challenge in India. Ecommerce has been growing at a huge pace. The logistics aren't able to cope up with that. Our team needs to be in constant communication with the logistics to ensure that the customers order reaches before time. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Bikester Global Pvt Ltd? Hasan Kakal : In the next 5 years, we plan to be a one stop place to fulfil all the needs of a biker. We are soon launching an app where one will be able to book their trip or shop their favourite riding gear directly from the app. Apart from this, there will be a plethora of features and solutions that we will be offering on the app. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Hasan Kakal : Your end product will never be the one you thought of. Be open to keep iterating your idea and focus on getting better and better.

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Chandrika Jaini Vedam : It happened out of the blue. I was working as a freelance author, post my lectureship days, when I started getting a lot of requirements for content development. Obviously, I had to say no to some of the projects. Then one day, an existing client of mine suggested that I should lead a team of authors who would develop content, which I could oversee and deliver. The idea was sown, which later sprouted into excalibEr Solutions in 2008. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by excalibEr Solutions Chandrika Jaini Vedam : We plan syllabus for textbooks in tandem with state, national and international boards. We develop well-researched and original content for academic books like textbooks, question banks, workbooks, examination booklets, IQ and General Knowledge books, language books. We also create general books including storybooks, novels, puzzle books, activity books, coffee table books, reference books and activity books. Additionally, we also develop storyboards for interactive animations and AR/VR experiences. Great Companies: What makes excalibEr Solutions different from hundreds of other similar firms? Chandrika Jaini Vedam : Our approach makes us different- it is not about how much more we write to impart knowledge; it is about how little we write to impart much more knowledge. We believe in saving time, money, energy and the environment. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Chandrika Jaini Vedam : Struggles and challenges are two-pronged- personal challenges include time shortage and finding the right people at the right time, recruitment challenges include finding people who believe in working sincerely and ethically, and the same applies to the clients. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for excalibEr Solutions? Chandrika Jaini Vedam : I am looking at multidimensional growth of excalibEr Solutions. This will include expanding the geographical footprint beyond India and also increasing the breadth of our existing services by expanding into adjoining areas like digital offerings. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Chandrika Jaini Vedam : It will be the old fashioned- dream big; work hard towards your goals; be sincere to yourself and to your clients

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Sonal Sinha : Previously, I used to work for website designing and digital marketing company based in New Delhi. It was recession time of 2008-2009, so our project manager had left the job due to nonpayment of dues. The company owner asked me if I can manage the web and SEO projects for the company. Even though I was hesitant, initially, I did agree. This is where I learned the skills of managing teams and how to deliver the result to the clients. So from sales, I had moved to project management in my second job. Salaries were often delayed during my time in the company since the recession period was challenging as new projects were concerned. This was when I decided it’s time I started my own company. I came back to Nagpur and started Shri Krishna Technologies in January 2010. At that time, WordPress as a CMS was very new, and people used it only for blogs. We used to get a lot of projects designing and developing corporate blogs for existing websites. We were also one of the top developers on Elance for WordPress in 2011. As WordPress grew from a blog site CMS to a complete website CMS and Joomla wasn’t moving faster, we developed our skills more into WordPress, and with more projects under us, we were very comfortable using WordPress for all our projects. It was easier to manage for clients, and the learning curve was significantly less, so a simple manual was used to do the trick, whereas Joomla took a lot of time for the customer to understand and get under the skin. Besides SKT Themes (our main website), I own SKT Themes India, which is targeted for Indians only, and Themes21, which is a free WordPress theme website. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by SKT Web Themes Private Limited Sonal Sinha : Currently, we are focussing on adding more WordPress themes to make the user a more comprehensive selection. We are currently working on a better theme, which I hope will be groundbreaking. We have also started working on plugins. Also we help people all around the world in website development and designing, etc Great Companies: What makes SKT Web Themes Private Limited different from hundreds of other Web Designing firms ? Sonal Sinha : Even though we started the theme business in 2013, we started getting recognized from 2014 as we started getting our themes listed in WordPress.org and other places. Our WordPress themes have all the desired options, but the support we can say is amongst the best. We cater to every client’s requests and guide them through. Even though we were doing a lot of WordPress websites; however, while developing WordPress themes, we were completely new to what a customer can expect from an article. We then checked all the major competitors and their offerings and then understood the bare minimum options. After that, we added many theme options, thinking about what the customer can ask of apart from what is being offered. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Sonal Sinha : My worst experience to date has to be the 2016 experience when 3 of my employees copied our themes and started their own 2 companies. To date, they continue to copy our old 2016 theme framework and sell their WordPress themes online. Since then, we have continuously evolved our WordPress themes every year. During 2020 our WordPress themes now entirely page builder friendly and have different theme option customizers than most of our competitors. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for SKT Web Themes Private Limited? Sonal Sinha : I want WordPress to be both front end and back end editor in the next FIVE years. But the future, as they say, is unpredictable. I am sure the WordPress team has a map laid out in front of them. But you never know if some better CMS pops up in the market, and suddenly WordPress feels the pressure to add those features as well into their CMS. Currently, I don’t see any competition with WordPress holding above 60% CMS market share and over 38% of all websites done in WordPress. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Sonal Sinha : If you start your own business in WordPress, you should focus more on customer service as the market is quite saturated. Also, many plugins and themes are already free and do an excellent job, so you need to check them and build better tools that attract more clients. For a start, you should focus on something in your native language and country since the competition will be lower. Then expand to other countries and worldwide. Since I am into theme development, I would say the shelf life of a theme is only two years until people start finding other themes for a website’s fresh design. Hence, if you jump into theme development, you need to continually evolve and add more designs to the latest WordPress trends. WebSite : https://www.sktthemes.org/

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Prachala Anupmeya : The concept of cloth upcycling is not new. I have seen my grandmother, my mom and my aunts reusing old clothes or discarded clothes converting into some other useful products. I am just giving the concept a trendy touch. Now the question is how I got this concept to start my new journey of life. It was one fine day that the idea of "Cloth up-cycling" came to mind. The day on which I was with my 2 friends discussing what to do with clothes which are still good but we don’t use and even don’t want to donate. Everyone loves shopping and buying new trendy and fashionable clothes. We keep on filling our wardrobes with lots of clothes. We all have lots of clothes bought during festivals and many occasions, which we don’t wear or wish not to wear anymore, neither we can throw it away. It's what we call “Love it but can’t wear it”. So, We came up with the idea of making some goods out of it. And that's where I thought of taking the idea of reinventing unused/old/waste fabric. And I initiated a one time upcycling drive at our apartment with my 2 friends. Our one time up-cycling drive was for a cause and to encourage people to reuse and reduce waste. So we held an exhibition at our apartment on Women’s Day 8th March, 2014 One D-day we had a lot of crowd and appreciation. And we decided to continue and take our one time Upcycling drive to the next level. And we sowed the seed of #Reinvention. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Reinvention Motifs Prachala Anupmeya : Reinvention provides the solution for old/outgrown/unused/discarded clothes and fabrics. From a simple grocery bag to memory blankets/quilts , Reinvention provides you the service to convert your piece of clothes or fabrics to some useful products. Some of the most ongoing products are :- Memory Blanket with kids' outgrown clothes - You can donate your kids clothes to some needy person but still there are many clothes which you want to keep as a memory. Denim Products - Denims have their own charm. Pouches, Backpacks, Slings, Travel Bags, Storage boxes, Rug mats, Dining Mats and many other products we have created with denims. Saree Quilt and Saree boxes Return Gifts And definitely, in this pandemic situation, Reinvention has done lots of fabric masks. Great Companies: What makes Reinvention Motifs different from hundreds of other Upcycling and Designing firms ? Prachala Anupmeya : No doubt there are many Upcycleres there who do cloth upcycling. Each upcycling firm is unique with their concept. Reinvention is stuck to its concept of "Re-Inventing" and "Go Green". We provide our clients with solutions for each type of cloth which are in some way, not in use and discarded. We at Reinvention, try not to waste a piece of fabric. Even with the scrap pieces we create some useful products. Each and every product we do not sew or produce...... we create them with our love and passion.Especially with the kids' outgrown clothes, we try to create memories forever. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Prachala Anupmeya : Like any other new venture, we also have faced a whole lot of challenges. One of our biggest challenges was convincing people to reuse their old clothes, because while some people were enthusiastic about the idea, some were reluctant. Even people who appreciate our idea, do not want to buy end products as those were made from used clothes. People started giving us weird grins while checking our Upcycled products. So, to convince those people, we decided to let our work speak. We created sample products and exhibited those products. We also arranged some demonstrations and workshops for people to experience our concept of : Reuse and Reinvent. Another challenge I faced was after 3 years, when my both partners left work for some personal reason. The situation, shook me for some moment with their decision. I accepted this as another challenge of life and till date I am continuing my upcycling firm with the same passion, same dedication and more hard work. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Reinvention Motifs? Prachala Anupmeya : Reinvention was started with a very small amount of capital and with 3 friends. Slowly it started growing. Reinvention is always very supportive to women from weak financial backgrounds. We hire them, train them. Looking forward to the future of Reinvention, I have never aimed to earn crores of rupees. Our aim is based more on awareness than financial. Reinvention has clients from all the major cities of India. We are looking forward to reaching across the globe with our concept of "Reuse- Recycle- Recreate and Reduce" Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Prachala Anupmeya : Every new thing that is happening has its own challenges. To shine like gold, you have to pass through many difficult phases. "Never Give up" as "Winners never Quit and Quitters never Win".

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Kaushikee Priya Pal: I have spent over 12+ years in corporate taking various roles including technology, processes and people. At IBM while working under the Healthcare vertical, I got an opportunity to understand how the healthcare industry works outside India. Since then wanted to understand the different dynamics of this industry in India. It is unique and there is a lot of opportunity for digitalization. I always wished that Digitalization should reach small and medium-sized businesses and service providers. We strongly believe, Digitalization | Digital Marketing should not be a thing of big corporates alone. As of today, 42% of Indians use smartphones, which means 42% of Indians are ready for getting digital services through the internet. Every business should leverage this …isn’t it? The online retail market has picked up in the past 5-6 years, but when it comes to other sectors like healthcare, the growth is not that much because of few factors, which Compune wants to address. Compune's “Digital enablement of Clinics“ is a step towards bringing one’s preferred clinic online. It provides a unique platform for all individual medical practitioners and Clinics ( of all disciplines of medical science ) to reach out and uniquely connect to their patients. Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Compune Kaushikee Priya Pal: Compune’s “Digital Enablement Of Clinics” provides a platform to individual clinics where they get - Personalised website for single or multidiscipline clinics with appointment booking facility, video consultation with patients, appointment management system, prescription generation module and patient management module. In short one-stop-digital-solution for clinics. We don’t stop by just providing the platform, after onboarding our digital marketing team will design strategic campaigns to promote these individual clinics to engage with their potential customers. Compune also offers services like web and mobile application development, web design, digital marketing and SEO. Great Companies: What makes Compune different from hundreds of other Digital Marekting Firms? Kaushikee Priya Pal: Well, we know Compune's “Digital Enablement of Clinic” is unique, and this platform is the first of its kind. So here we stand different from any other Digital Marketing Agency. Digital Marketing is just a part of what we do. We provide a platform with an end-to-end solution along with digital marketing. In any healthcare system, data plays the most pivotal role and is sensitive. We understand this. That is why in our solution we make sure that every byte of data belongs to the respective clinic and it is their property. Even if they move out from our platform in future they still hold the data of their customer in totality. That is the reason we tell our customers our solution is a high return investment for them. We consider ourselves not only as a Digital Marketing Firm, but a complete digital enablement solution provider. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Kaushikee Priya Pal: To be honest, I expected that starting my own business after many years of corporate job would be easy. But once you start the process you start to understand the challenges. It’s like jumping into the deep end of the pool with no support. Challenges are more when you have very little capital to put at stake. I had to wear a lot of different hats and had to push myself to go outside my comfort zone on regular basis. There is never enough time. But success is equally rewarding. In my opinion, one of the greatest struggles, when you are starting out, is gaining the trust of the customer. Everyone is hesitant to bet on new entrants, we too faced that challenge but over these few years learnt that once you are transparent and honest to your client it is easy to gain their trust quickly. No one is a Genie to do wonders. So, in Compune we don’t make false promises. We believe in our capabilities; we know what we can deliver, and we work hard to deliver what we promise. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Compune? Kaushikee Priya Pal: We are making steady and systematic growth steps; we understand there is no silver bullet for success. We very well know we are not in a race in this area with bigger players. We believe in our unique proposition to provide sustainable growth. In the first year, our focus is primarily on adoption and personalization. We want our platform to provide a highly personalized experience to our customers and our customer’s customers. Focus during year 2 and 3 is about the scale. In the next 3 years, we are looking at bringing down the digital divide in personal health care. What we mean by this is, we see digital healthcare reaching into tier 2 and 3 cities and smaller towns across the country and we are hoping we will be a major contributor to this process. Year 4 and 5 would be our hyper-growth phase. We look forward to making Compune a common household name in every aspect of healthcare. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Kaushikee Priya Pal: Keep it Simple. Create a simple quality good or service. Start with your unique idea, narrow down your focus on your USP. Cut unnecessary features that dilute your solution. You can add those when you start growing. Win the trust of your clients. Website : https://www.compune.com/

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business? Srinivasan Subramanian : I was heading the Mobile Development at SAP Labs India and working with customers who were implementing SAP mobile. Together with a couple of my colleagues (Anup Alex and Praveen Kale) we started Unvired to simplify SAP mobile for customers. Initially we focussed on implementing SAP mobile and gradually developed an SAP Mobile product ourselves. We now have an SAP certified solution for digital that can be used to build mobile apps, web apps and bots. Great Companies: What are the various products and Services provided by Unvired Software India Pvt Ltd Srinivasan Subramanian : Unvired is a Digital First products company. We specialize in building products for SAP S/4 Hana modules Plant Maintenance, Sales & Distribution, CRM etc. We have an SAP certified platform on which we build and deploy these apps for customers. We also build web apps and bots on the same platform. Great Companies: What makes Unvired Software India Pvt Ltd different from hundreds of other Software Products Companies? Srinivasan Subramanian : We have a cost effective solution that just works. Our implementation time is a week or two (for products) and this helps customers to go live quickly. The second aspect is the razor focus we bring into our products for mobile and web with SAP. And lastly the after sales support we provide endears us to our customers. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face? Srinivasan Subramanian : Being a product company and not indulging in typical software services is the route we chose to take. That’s a hard one for a bootstrapped company based out of India. While the network of customers we knew helped us initially, that would not help us achieve growth. To achieve that we incorporated in the US a few years ago and also hired a professional CEO Alok Pant to head our sales and strategy. Enterprise sales is a tough nut to crack but can be rewarding once you are able to do that and this is exactly what we are doing. The other main challenge is to attract the right talent, nurture them and motivate them to have a career with Unvired. We are proud that many of our Managers are those who joined us a freshers and have grown to responsible positions today dealing with customers, delivering applications and enabling additional sales with them. Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Unvired Software India Pvt Ltd? Srinivasan Subramanian : We are investing in our range of products continuously. Innovation is the key to our growth and to that end we have invested in building out a No-Code platform. Today using the Unvired TurboApps builder one can design micro applications, connect them up to enterprise systems like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle etc without having to write any code. We are also investing in machine learning and analytics and providing outcome based solutions to customers. We believe that these innovations will help us grow continually. We are not looking at what we will be in 5+ years or any such timeframe related goals. What we realise is that there is a market opportunity to provide the kind of solutions we do and that needs continuous innovation which is our focus. If we deliver on our goals and vision we believe that growth for Unvired to be a major player in this space is achievable. Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be? Srinivasan Subramanian : Starting up is not as romantic as its made out to be. I would personally ask people who are interested in starting out or have recently done so to not only read and get motivated by people who raised money or made millions but also focus on what the thousands of smaller companies and their founders have done to survive and grow in this market. While successes of the nature of a Flipkart or Zomato are few and far in between, there are any number of companies who are successful in a much smaller scale and many which have failed. These offer great real life experiences for people to learn from and aspire to become the next big thing.