Auxenta – A case study on innovation
Prasath Nanayakkara
The most successful entrepreneurs are not merely the hardest working, they’re the most innovative. You can hustle and put in crazy hours of work, but if you’re not unfolding your innovative muscles, you’ll never achieve success. Ask Prasath Nanayakkara and he’ll tell you.
Reminiscing the not-so-old days when he started his entrepreneurial venture, Auxenta Inc., an innovative software and QA engineering services and technology product consulting company headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in Colombo nearly three years ago, Prasath says that he always wanted to explore his ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ since the time he had completed his MBA.
A past Royalist, he won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Electrical Engineering. Post- MBA he was employed in the US for six years and returned to Sri Lanka to work at Virtusa for the next 12 years till Auxenta emerged. Auxenta had actually happened over a dinner conversation on a chilly winter evening in the US, he smiles.
Auxenta co founder Dr. Shahani Markus and Prasath had dinner with fellow MIT colleagues nearly three years ago. “They heard us out and said, ‘Let’s do it – here’s the cheque’.
The reason why they rearing to go with this business is because Auxenta enables companies to meet their IT strategies with innovative and accelerated development methodologies. Prasath says that advances in cloud, mobile, social and big data have revolutionised how IT departments operate globally. “To support these advancements, software development and engineering process too have evolved. We came in to help IT departments of these firms to transition,” he says adding this was a novel business model.
Then other things followed.
Auxenta built an app named Bitcoin Bazaar for Bay Area startup Bay Coins, LLC available for iOS and Android devices making it the first fully functional app for matching buyers and sellers of Bitcoin on both platforms. The app lets users find buyers and sellers in their neighbourhood, using location services from their mobile phone, and lets buyers and sellers transact using cash without needing to enter bank or financial information into the app. Bitcoin Bazaar is available on iTunes App Store and Google Play.
“The Bit coins app brought us luck,” Prasath says adding that this gave them the impetus to asset companies to build cool, cutting edge products.
Auxenta has achieved a great feat in the industry by reaching a 100 member-team within just too and half years since its inception. Prasath’s and Shahani’s MIT alumnus and long-time colleague technology entrepreneur Sanjeev Agrawal, perhaps best known as Google’s first global head of product marketing, has taken on the role of product strategy advisor at Auxenta.
“We have more than 20 customers in three continents and four countries (and still counting),” he adds.
“While at Google as Head of Product Marketing (May 2004 – Oct 2005) Sanjeev led a 150-member global marketing team focused on launching, promoting and improving all Google products, while providing field marketing/sales support for the company’s 500 + global sales, team,” Prasath says beaming. Referred to as an ‘exceptional visionary’, Agrawal has in recent times held leadership roles at three successful startups: CEO of Aloqa, a mobile push platform (acquired by Motorola), VP Product and Marketing at Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and Founding CEO of Collegefeed (acquired by AfterCollege).
Now Auxenta want to create efficiencies. They want to create valuable IP (Intellectual Property) which can be re-used or transformed into different products. Auxenta is well on track for this as its first year revenue was up by 300 per cent. “Our second year revenue is on track to be doubled by 100 per cent,” Prasath adds.
Next year is one where the company aims to mentor local start-ups. “Mentoring upcoming start-up companies is what Auxenta wants to be part of,” Prasath says that the local
education system should encourage those who aspire to try something on their own.