Two peas in a pod: Software, Nightmare & a Bootstrapped Affair
Suhasini and Ankit Dudhwewala always had the option of plucking the lowest-hanging fruit. And there were many in the journey. The spirited duo, though, laboured hard, defied odds, and crafted a feisty story. And yes, they are still profitably bootstrapped!
Ahmedabad, April 2020
Every night, they ambled along the unswerving road. For the entrepreneurs, a 10-minute saunter to the inconspicuous neighbourhood soda waala shop had been a loved ritual for six long years. The post-dinner break was the much-needed me-time when the cofounders would not stay married to their businesses, the daily bustle would die down on its own, and Suhasini and Ankit Dudhwewala would start behaving like a couple. The husband and wife would reflect on their lives, the couple would treasure the rejuvenating walk, and a glass of soda would play host to fizzy conversations.
But on an uneventful night in the second week of April, something suddenly went amiss. Though Suhasini and Ankit stepped out for their soda drill, the duo stayed mum, and plodded along. The heavy steps towards the shop made the 10-minute walk look like an endless journey. Suhasini was gripped with a nightmarish scenario. Covid had triggered an unprecedented 30–40% crash in the revenues of SoftwareSuggest, and the CEO of the bootstrapped venture was staring at an uncertain future. “This was the first crisis of my life,” says Suhasini, who along with Ankit cofounded Appitsimple in May 2013. The first offering of the venture was SoftwareSuggest, and the second one — CallHippo — was started in January 2017. “We didn’t talk at all,” she says.
On that Monday night, Soda tasted flat, the helplessness of business losing the fizz was getting traumatic, and the constraints of a bootstrapped venture — unlike the funded ones who had the luxury of at least some kind of runway — aggravated the pain of the entrepreneurs who had laboriously scaled their businesses without outside capital. Every penny lost weighed as heavy as a pound. Now, when the maiden entrepreneurial plane was ominously heading towards an imminent crash, the rookie founders didn’t have any parachute. “We were hanging by the thread,” says Suhasini. “But we never gave up hope,” says the tenacious founder.
Back during her early college days, Suhasini discovered the dogged side of her personality. When the traditional and unquestioned norm in the family was to get married at a young age, Suhasini expressed her desire to pursue chartered accountancy. The resistance was expected, but the young woman stuck to her guns. After a year of unabated perseverance, the family finally relented and let her try her luck with CS (company secretary). The win was big. “I was the first in the family to do so,” she says. Over the next twelve months, the student notched an impressive performance, and the results convinced her parents that their lad was ready for bigger things in life. Suhasini got enrolled in CA and joined a small firm after completing the course. Entering the job market was the second big win.
Booster dose, tight deadline and short runway
Meanwhile, Ankit was about to score his first win in 2014. Born into a family of entrepreneurs, he completed his bachelors from Symbiosis in Pune, and MBA from Narsee Monjee. Next, the young grad joined the family business of pharma manufacturing, worked for two years, and decided to chart his own course in January 2014. His father encouraged him to fly, gave a seed capital of Rs 36 lakh, and handed over a realistic dose of advice. “If you want to do something, then do it for at least 10 years. Stay put, and don’t think about short term,” he told his lad. Brimming with confidence and enthusiasm, Ankit decided to set a timeline for his maiden venture. The plan was simple. If the rookie founder ran out of the seed money, he would return to the family fold. “While ideally one should never stop trying, entrepreneurs need to fix a deadline for everything,” he says.
Freakishly enough, it was fast turning out to be a five-month deadline. The non-techie started SoftwareSuggest, and soon found himself stranded. “I didn’t know what SEO was. In May, we almost ran out of money,” he recalls. “It was quite scary,” he says, adding that if the venture had not worked out, he would have gone back to his family business. For the 26 year old, the pressure was immense. “It was a lot about proving myself,” he says. Fortunately, one of his friends came to the rescue, guided the greenhorn to a blog on SEO, and after a few weeks, things turned around.
Back in June 2020, there was still no trace of any silver lining. With uncertainty still looming large — and no visible signs or indicators pointing to an end of the pandemic — the couple reluctantly decided to explore two options. The first one was to look for funding, and the second revolved around the idea of exiting the business. But it would have been foolishly insane to even think of the plan A. Who would fund a business during the peak of the pandemic? And it hardly mattered even if the bootstrapped venture was profitable. There were no backers.
The Plan B, though, sounded realistic. But for the bootstrapped founders, who had laboriously grown the business, navigated the blues of the tech venture, made it sustainable and kept it profitable from the first year, it was a cruel idea to plan exit. But in spite of all optimism and passion, the couple also were realistic and practical. The exit talks started, due diligence was undertaken and the process got dragged on for six months. The destiny, however, had scripted a twist in the tale. As the intensity of the pandemic started to wane a bit after nine months or so, the business rebounded, cash flow improved and the exit talks flamed out. Dudhwewalas stayed put, displayed enough nerve and in the end, the fortune favoured the brave.
Capital gain or capital punishment?
Six years, still bootstrapped, still growing and still profitable! Two questions that the gritty couple need to answer is how difficult it is to grow without outside capital, and how tempting is the idea of raising venture capital? Dudhwewalas first talk about the easy part. The founders never felt a genuine need to raise money. “I don’t know what kind of business is to raise money without a pressing need to solve a problem,” says Ankit. Though it was hard to see so many ventures raising tons of capital at an insane valuation and burning loads of money and still remaining elusive when it came to posting profit, a big consolation — and it was quite painful — to see most of them shutter and struggle to get even remotely close to product-market fit.
Suhasini, meanwhile, talks about the unglamorous and tough side of a bootstrapped life. “You get ignored. You remain invisible. And you don’t get noticed,” she says. There were times, when the founders wondered whether building a sustainable business was a right thing to do. “But such thoughts were only fleeting,” she says. The husband-wife duo has developed a thick skin, and married to the larger cause of building valuable business. “You only notice a soda glass when it loses its fizz. We will keep our fizz intact and keep growing,” she says.
Kudos to the duo of living their dream, and making scores of founders realise that SaaS can be sassy even if one doesn’t have a tech background. “You don’t need a tech founder or a cofounder to build a tech company,” he smiles, summing up the spunky journey of SoftwareSuggest and CallHippo.
