What, Why, Where, How and more on the proposed startup

Less than 10 days to get relieved from AdventNet and to start working on my new venture.

OpManager OnDemand is almost ready for release. Initial testing and bug-fixing is complete and the team is now into upgrade testing in the local grid setup and if there are no unforeseen issues, there should be an upgrade happening in the IDC grid this weekend ; before I get relieved.

I have started getting questions from friends / colleagues on my proposed startup. I have put them here for the sake of those I did not bump into, in the past couple of weeks.

Decided on what to do (or) what problem to solve ?

The first one I am going to work on will be a SaaS based solution to manage residents welfare association.

Solutions for schools and for clinics will follow later.

Film production management software, may not be taken up in the near term.

Why association software ?

I know of the pain points in managing such an entity and felt that I can easily sell early versions of the software to local apartment associations in Velachery and surrounding suburbs. This is the region which had witnessed major growth during the previous real estate boom and which has a high density of IT professionals, so easy to target them.

Also the essential components and the experience gained in building this software will equip me in targeting other segments (schools and clinics) and by that time, “netbooks” (affordable net enabled notebook computers) would be available in the market from multiple players, at competitive rates, so as to enable adoption of SaaS based solutions.

Are there existing solutions addressing this market ?

When I first searched for existing solutions with the keywords “Apartments Association Software”, I was surprised to not find relevant, useful results. Then, after hopping through multiple keywords, found such software. The problem was with the keywords : I should have used the keyword sets “Condominium Association Software” or “Home Owners Association Software” or “HOA Software”.

Yardi seems to be the big guy with a much broader portfolio and revenue of over $50M, while there are several other medium/small players too; like Buildium, CondoConduit, AssociationVoice, CondoManager, Advantos and more.

Happy, because existing players validate the market and present themselves as targets to beat. This is far easier than a new market and an unclear feature set.

How are you planning to sell ?

My initial market is going to be Velachery (Chennai, India).

Here in Chennai, even with the out-sourcing/off-shoring opportunities, people still earn in Rupees. The benefit of the cost advantages mostly goes to the companies which undercut US rates, while still paying Indian salaries. Such companies usually have very weak presence in Indian market. So, to sell to Indian customers, I need to come up with some “real” Indian rates. My bicycle should come in handy, for my sales visits. Once I have my solution working fine for a decent number of associations, I would then target a bigger market.

Where are you going to have your office ?

I will be working from home, at least for a couple of months.

Are you going to employ someone ?

No, not at once. May be, a little later.

Platform, Language ?

Google AppEngine, Python.

Started coding ?

No, only from Oct 1, 2008.

( Your feedback and suggestions are welcome : Either as comments to this post or to r.rajkumar [at] gmail [dot] com)