Some time back Spundhan started its shift towards building products along with its Embedded Services offering. We equally invested heavily in infrastructure, new office space, hired more experienced managers, etc. The year 2014 saw a lot new changes in the company. New products, new strategies, new office and new people! Real exciting times … and guess what? We got noticed!

An opportunity came by and I couldn’t but not refuse it. We had to move fast and move fast we did!

As our mentor – Vivek Pawar (Sankalp Semiconductors) puts it, “80% of the work is done in 20% of the time” – it was a decision I had to make and in no time we moved to Hubli. It happened so fast that we couldn’t make an attempt to say good bye to Belgaum. So heres a short recap …

 

What about the new office space and all the smack interiors?

To many it might seem we spent all this effort, time and money in building the office and 6 months later we had to move? Was it loss? Was it worth it? Well, we wouldn’t have guessed that we would move out of the new office soon right? So we did what anyone looking to grow their business and/or brand would do.

Furthermore, by moving to Hubli I feel the gain is far bigger than losing out on the new office. So it was a pure business call. Ah! While we are at it, by the way, this smack new Office with ultra modern facilities apt for IT/Coaching/Banks is for Lease/Rent if you are interested. Please get in touch.

Hey what about your old office then? I remember you had two offices in Belgaum right?

Yes! We planned our move in stages. We partly moved our team to old office and a small team to Hubli. At a later date the entire team would move to Hubli. Just then a new opportunity struck!

One of our customers obliged to acquire/pickup/transfer/merge (whatever you want to call it) our entire team working at the old office (this team in fact was doing dedicated work for them). Even better, they wanted the old office space as well. Spundhan was very happy to see its customer happy!

 

You never mentioned. What was the BIG opportunity that made you move?

All startups fail for two prime reasons:

• Lack of Capital (Cash)
• Lack of strong Founding team that withers the storm

Had we continued in Belgaum, Spundhan would have been no different and would have eventually failed due to above reasons. In order to get into products, we needed Capital as well as more founding members in our team. So far it has been a one man army (ie. me) with a few failed attempts at partners. So we needed both – capital and founders.

I got both these issues addressed in the Hubli bargain. But there was a small hiccup. Spundhan was making steady income and has been known as a Services company. We had built a good client base that included many a fortune 500 companies. If we now transitioned into products, the question was whether or not we should close our steady money making services business?

After many a iterations through thoughts/plans it emerged loud and clear: for products, we had to get into a new focussed Venture.

 

Rewind: A year ago, our mentors Vivek and Srini (of Cosmic Circuits) had connected me to a then 1 yr old startup –LinkEZ Technologies Private Limited (say it as Link Easy) which was incubated in Deshpande Foundation, Hubli.

Now, things slowly started to fall in place. It came as no surprise that a merger would be the right approach. We split Spundhan’s team, pulled out our best for products and merged into LinkEZ which already had two founders (me being the third).

Coincidentally, similar to our product vision, LinkEZ too was in the initial phase of building products for IoT (Internet of Things). Moreover, both founders had immense hardware design and development expertise while our team had all the embedded software/Cloud and mobile apps capabilities.

Thus, for me, it was like a hobson’s choice (an opportunity I could not refuse). As a result, we had to move to Hubli. I have now joined LinkEZ as the co-founder, CTO.

 

 

What will happen to Spundhan now?

One brings two as they say, while we were looking for a decent space for Spundhan in Hubli at a reasonable cost, BVB College’s Centre for Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CTIE) agreed to incubate us. Further, Prof. Shettar (now VC of KLE Tech. University, then the Principal of BVB) and Vivek shared their vision of starting an ESDM Research Cluster (Electronics System Design and Manufacturing) on campus. I bought into the idea and came up with a framework where both Spundhan and BVB would equally benefit. And so it happened… I was made the Head of ESDM Research Cluster which right now has a team size of 30+ youngsters eager to innovate on new technologies and Spundhan is a key technology partner in all the activities. The cluster researches on next-Gen innovative technologies and has partnered with many relevant industry partners. Spundhan remains associated with BVB and has retained its Embedded Services business.

 

Are We Hiring for our New Venture @LinkEZ?

Absolutely! We are looking to build the best team for IoT product space and are keen to find out about you and how you could help our new startup scale. If interested, please get in touch (comment below). Any or all of following Positions are vacant for immediate joining: Director – Embedded Hardware, Senior Embedded Engineer, Team Lead – Embedded, Senior Software Engineer for Cloud, Test Lead – Hardware, Test Lead – Software.