TNNPallav Nadhani was still in school in Kolkata when he founded Fusion Charts, a company whose product helps you convert boring data into beautiful, interactive charts, and which has 30,000 customers -the who's who of the global corporate world -in 180 countries. It's not the kind of product that brings in tons of money , but it's earned the 31-year-old enough to turn investor and fund 22 startups.
You started FusionCharts when at 16. How did that happen?
I started when I was in class 11.The first few years of my life I was in Bhagalpur in Bihar. My father got me a computer early on. He ran a computer training institute, and there would be computer books lying around the house. I wrote my own programs. In 2000, we moved to Kolkata, and my dad decided to set up a web design agency . We did not have many employees so he asked me to learn web design. I would go to school, come back and design web pages, then go home to do my homework. In Class 11, I realized my dad was using bad Excel charts for his applications. I thought we could get rid of boring Excel.
How did this interest become a product and a company?
The program I coded could create interesting charts and graphs. There was a site, which paid handsomely for writing articles about innovation, about a dollar a word. So I wrote an article about what I had built, published it, got a lot of feedback; people came to use my charts. I did it free for a few guys, then I realized it was time consuming, so I started asking for payment. Then I realized instead of doing one-on-ones, I could build a product. The original intent was to make pocket money but as customers grew, my dad and I formed a proprietorship in 2005. He took care of operations, finance, investments, sales, administration.My job was technology , product, marketing. I would call myself an accidental entrepreneur.
You said you had customers from outside India...
None of my customers was in India, which was good. Indians don't pay for software. My dad was selling in India and that didn't do well. When I started, I knew I didn't want to sell here.
You've built multiple products since then...
We've built 18 products, of which seven are still active. We have created five companies of which three are still running.We are very experimental. Anytime we get a good idea, we don't wait. We try it out. It might not work every time, but we learn. Each time you develop a product or start a company, is it a new entrepreneurial journey? When we are solving a new problem for a new audience, it is refreshing, challenging, sometimes chaotic and depressing.That's the challenge of being an entrepreneur. But it helps us remain fresh and young.
If you had started FusionCharts today, what would you have done differently?
I would have been more aggressive. For a first-time entrepreneur, building a team is one of the most difficult challenges. I was not great at delegating. If I were to start over, I would make sure I have the best people and don't do everything myself. We weren't focussed on developing people, which sets the wrong culture. Now, culture is our top priority, and it is not about free beer or fancy office. It's an invisible oxygen running across that describes how people behave.
In hindsight, do you feel you could have taken VC money and grown faster?
I don't think we could have ever taken VC money . What we are building is not a make-moneyfast kind of company . The products we are building are made out of love and money doesn't buy you better products. Money can buy you people, but they won't stay . You can see that happening in the big companies.
Why did you move to from Kolkata to Bengaluru?
In Kolkata, you don't build startups. You build businesses. Everyone is bottom-line oriented.That was a good thing inculcated in me. If I had started in Bengaluru, maybe I would have been steered into the glamour, raised VC money , and got influenced by that. Hiring was tough in Kolkata. It wasn't a software product city. For every 100 interviews, we hired one. Bengaluru has plenty of talent.
You started FusionCharts when at 16. How did that happen?
I started when I was in class 11.The first few years of my life I was in Bhagalpur in Bihar. My father got me a computer early on. He ran a computer training institute, and there would be computer books lying around the house. I wrote my own programs. In 2000, we moved to Kolkata, and my dad decided to set up a web design agency . We did not have many employees so he asked me to learn web design. I would go to school, come back and design web pages, then go home to do my homework. In Class 11, I realized my dad was using bad Excel charts for his applications. I thought we could get rid of boring Excel.
How did this interest become a product and a company?
The program I coded could create interesting charts and graphs. There was a site, which paid handsomely for writing articles about innovation, about a dollar a word. So I wrote an article about what I had built, published it, got a lot of feedback; people came to use my charts. I did it free for a few guys, then I realized it was time consuming, so I started asking for payment. Then I realized instead of doing one-on-ones, I could build a product. The original intent was to make pocket money but as customers grew, my dad and I formed a proprietorship in 2005. He took care of operations, finance, investments, sales, administration.My job was technology , product, marketing. I would call myself an accidental entrepreneur.
You said you had customers from outside India...
None of my customers was in India, which was good. Indians don't pay for software. My dad was selling in India and that didn't do well. When I started, I knew I didn't want to sell here.
You've built multiple products since then...
We've built 18 products, of which seven are still active. We have created five companies of which three are still running.We are very experimental. Anytime we get a good idea, we don't wait. We try it out. It might not work every time, but we learn. Each time you develop a product or start a company, is it a new entrepreneurial journey? When we are solving a new problem for a new audience, it is refreshing, challenging, sometimes chaotic and depressing.That's the challenge of being an entrepreneur. But it helps us remain fresh and young.
If you had started FusionCharts today, what would you have done differently?
I would have been more aggressive. For a first-time entrepreneur, building a team is one of the most difficult challenges. I was not great at delegating. If I were to start over, I would make sure I have the best people and don't do everything myself. We weren't focussed on developing people, which sets the wrong culture. Now, culture is our top priority, and it is not about free beer or fancy office. It's an invisible oxygen running across that describes how people behave.
In hindsight, do you feel you could have taken VC money and grown faster?
I don't think we could have ever taken VC money . What we are building is not a make-moneyfast kind of company . The products we are building are made out of love and money doesn't buy you better products. Money can buy you people, but they won't stay . You can see that happening in the big companies.
Why did you move to from Kolkata to Bengaluru?
In Kolkata, you don't build startups. You build businesses. Everyone is bottom-line oriented.That was a good thing inculcated in me. If I had started in Bengaluru, maybe I would have been steered into the glamour, raised VC money , and got influenced by that. Hiring was tough in Kolkata. It wasn't a software product city. For every 100 interviews, we hired one. Bengaluru has plenty of talent.
