In this week's episode of #DamaniTalks I spoke to Kailash Katkar, Founder of Quick Heal a man who built a ₹1800 crore IT security company without a college degree!
Kailash created a global empire spread across 60+ countries starting from a small one-room bootstrapped computer repair services company – He has been an inspiration to many!
Key takeaways from the episode:
- Why did Kailash drop out of school? Why did he decide not to pursue higher education? What sort of challenges did this bring about in his entrepreneurial journey?
- How did Kailash's interest in repairing calculators come about? How did Kailash land his first job in a Radio and calculator repair store? What were the key takeaways from his experience here? What was the trigger that told him to leave and set up his own venture?
- What did his first venture- CAT Computer Services, provide? Where did his interest in computers come from? What was the feeling like of generating a turnover of Rs.1 lakh after a year during that time?
- Why did Kailash transition his company to Quick Heal? How did he convince his brother to join the company? Why was Kailash installing antivirus software on his client's computers free of cost initially? Apart from the antivirus software, what else did Quick Heal start providing?
- Why did Kailash decide to pivot from hardware to software business? What are some of the most significant learning about running a B2B software business? What prompted Kailash to hire better managers for Quick Heal? According to him, what is the importance of getting the right managers in place?
- Why was Kailash not able to take a bank loan during that time? Why did Kailash decide to take VC funding? What was it like raising money from Sequoia Capital in 2010? How did they add value to Quick Heal? What was the feeling like to be the first Indian cybersecurity company to be listed on BSE and NSE? Where does Kailash see Quick Heal in the next 5 years now? What is his advice to budding entrepreneurs?
