Interview with Shibam Sarbswa, Co-Founder & Business Head, TrackNext

How and when did you come up with the idea behind your venture? And, how was the initial establishment of your start-up done?

I think it was the 3^rd year of my engineering, ecommerce businesses where just speeding up & I started thinking what next to the ecommerce, then I thought to create a Business-Social-Network where people can do social networking & also get exposed to the businesses.. This later went broader when I met my co-founder in an event who was 5 years senior then me & having good exposure of this field.

Now to the 2^nd part of the question, I & my cofounder researched around 1 month on all pros & corns of it, then we architecture the whole structure, & came up with tracknext.com

What are the directions from which you invite funding for your venture and how often does this process repeat?

Actually this question is too early for me I guess, as we are moving for our version 1.0; anyway we have developed around nine pockets of revenue generation which will repeat every month. And the most interesting aspect is that a user will also earn while posting stuffs on tracknext in our upcoming services, which will happen 1^st time on the planet.

Challenges are the welcome friends for any new venture. What, how big and how many were they in your initial years of establishment of your venture and how did you guys manage to overcome them?

Well nothing in this world is a cake walk, & my whole team take challenges like a new lesion, & every time we have defeated all challenges by our weapon which we call, team work.
But most challenging thing was, to stand on our user expatiations/satisfaction & for that we are working very hard to give them the best possible & a very crispy service.

Are there any challenges which you’re fighting still that might change the face of the venture?

I think I have already answered it in the previous question, but yes there are few challenges like designing of the user interface, so that every person from a school kid to a big entrepreneur find it very easy to use, & for the same we have researched on around 500+ interactive portals of 50+ nations. So, I think in our next version this challenge will not only be solved but will also become a USP for us.

How far has the growth chart of the venture gone according to its initial plans during establishment?

I think its success is more than we expected; only in our testing phase we got 7K+ users also TN also it was covered by 50+ media globally.
When we launch beta-3.0 in Dec 14 with little functionality like Launch, Matching profile, SEO and SSR we received huge appreciations by our users. Till of now we have partnered & also marketed with big players like Google, Drupal Camp-IIT-B, TiE etc & it was really very nice learning experience for me & my whole team.

What according to you have been the major factors responsible for the venture to sustain in the market, in terms of Quality, Price, Delivery, Availability, Marketing, or other factors?

I think for us apart from all the factors you mentioned in your question, our sustaining force in the innovation that we are bring out in tracknext & mainly the SSR Technology which we have only created, apart from it the virgin features that we came up & most important factor is the nation itself with huge market & best part is the average age of the nation i.e. 23 years which makes our path a little easy for growth.

How was the phase of choosing the right people to carry forward not just the work but the vision of your company? On what basis were the employees selected and trusted during the formation times of the company?

In my personal opinion the vision of the company should always be backed by good intrapreneurs & to get the quality intrapreneurs on board we utilised the power of our own established network, selected them as per our previous project experience with them, their infield exposure & the value addition quality to our vision. And I am very proud to share with you that I have got the best soldiers in my battalion to face every challenges by the weapon of combined team work.

Which is the most specific feature of your start-up which differentiates it from others in the same field? How do you come up with new products/ideas/innovations for further and better developments?

Well there are various big & small features which make us distinct from our competitors’ such as:

Launch Stage- Capable of providing Visibility from the time product is to be launched

Business Portfolio- Comprised of sliding banners, job management, blogs & newsletter services.

Virtual Work Spaces- Supporting organizations via. Drives, wiki, chat, graphs & more.

We keep a wise view in the user behavior on our portal, & it helps us with ideas of improvement & new innovations.

Keeping up with the first image is truly necessary in business. How do you consistently maintain the functioning of the company to keep it up to date with the market demands? What are your plans on expanding the venture?

I think the 1^st part of the question is already answered on the previous question; whereas in terms of expansion we have made our time line

Age Group wise
Platform wise
Nation wise &
Segment wise

Also after the launch of version 1.0 we will be working on Argumented Realty advertisement model which we believe will change the digital ad market completely.

Which are those memorable moments or learning experiences in the field of business which come with great responsibilities of sustaining the venture along with the employees?

We have done a better job than expected & I think the entire credits goes to employees, we keep healthy environment inside office. We use to work with Joy & friendship, not with pressure or tension; we enjoy every moment at office. We believe in creating everything highly optimised, innovative and fast at server. We all try our best to match the user expectations. They help me in not taking wrong decisions & we also organise party with knowledge sharing sessions, which are very memorable moments for me. Without them I can’t be where I am, they are my building blocks. We work with positive attitude and I want to thanks to all my employees for giving me a change to lead them.

Who have been your influencers and support systems throughout this journey? Who/ what else has played a prominent role in keeping you inspired to take forward the vision behind your venture?

I think everyone i.e. My Parents, Mentors, friends, co-workers and all users of tracknext have been very supportive for this entire journey & all credit of my entrepreneurship goes to my mom, who is a lecturer by profession & the best friend of mine; someone who helps me in every walk of life, also praises me for my victory n blesses me to be the best.

Please share with us the achievements earned in this journey till date.
Sessions /Month : 45,000+
Users : 7000+
Visitors From India : 90%
Growth Rate/Month : 30%
No of Tacks/Month : 7,000+
Alexa (Global) : 54,650
Alexa (India) : 9,589
Bounce rate : 13.60%

Did you ever have a chance to interact with the customers and learn from them about how much they love the functioning of your venture?

I follow a principal “Treat Your Users as Your Boss” , i.e. never make them angry, always work on their feedback & give them a perfect result on time.
And there are several time when I have interacted with the users & every time I found that they are really very supportive & ready to add value by their some wonderful & effective feedback/suggestion.
Some of the feedback are also been posted on our official Facebook page al– click here

How has Technology played an essential role in changing the whole scene of the start-up?

Technology is the biggest player of the team in every startup, It makes the problem solving, risk analyzing, resource availability researches very easy, fast & everything just one click away. You can find the best aerodynamics ratio to the smallest bug solving information in a very easy & organised manner. SO there is no denying fact that yes it’s the key player for startups.

Growth being a prominent factor, where do you see your venture growing in the next 5 years?

As per our plan & growth rate we see tracknext.com as emerging network for around all Asian countries. Also adding some values to millions of people’s venture & to their professional life too.

In what ways can your venture (story) prove inspiring to aspiring entrepreneurs?

The story of our venture will give a personal touch to every people as it seems to be the story of every common people’s, we have also learnt from time & failures as they do, we are also not extraordinary talent, rather an alloy of ordinary talents. So I think it will inspire them in moving forward in their venture too & they will find themselves in every step of this story.