Challenges in the ever-changing business environment are dynamic. It is a general understanding that the issues a business faces are a part and parcel of running the operations. The only plausible thing that can be done is to counter these challenges with innovative and out-of-the-box solutions that can help enhance the business’s overall outcome in an effective and efficient way.
Koanex is a company with a unique approach towards overcoming business obstacles that are more oriented towards creating real world experiences. These experiences are leveraged to streamline the operations with strategic implementation of right technology.
In an exclusive interview with CIO Look India, let us read what Uttam Panda – CEO & Founder of the company has to say about the ups and downs of industry with respect to Koanex’s ability to enable appropriate solutions:
Give us a brief overview of Koanex, its vision, and its journey since inception.
Koans are Zen story telling cognitive tools to explore deeper truths and abstractions of self and the world. Koanex aims to utilize the Zen elemental wisdom to solve business problems by substituting formulations with real world experience since the problems pertained to real world.
Koanex believe in applying business koans to solve strategic imperatives. Koanex consists of Zen master equivalents in the field of product management, embedded technology, AI and deep tech combined with our growing team of domain experts and together we provide innovation at scale to power our clientele in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Every journey needs to go through certain pivots, our initiative with Koanex is to apply the diverse talent and expertise towards the business space. We were sure from day one, that we are going to bootstrap Koanex on our own. We realized that traditional outsourcing has been missing the mark in terms of serving the dynamic business intuition that drives deep tech companies, Koanex was to replace traditional body shopping formulation with intuitive innovation at a micro level.
We started Koanex on 1st July 2019 and within 15 months of our inception we have grown 2X from our original target in Engineering (Core Team) manpower. Koanex has been very experimental in the way of working and thinking have outsourced all its operational divisions (Talent Acquistion, HR, Account Auding, Payroll, Operations, and Finance) to 3rd Pares. In these 5 months, we have acquired clients in the areas of Robotics, Smart Energy, Automotive, and Gaming domain.
The leadership team of Koanex takes care of the Engineering team hired. The whole thought process of Koanex is very much Engineering-centric. The true catalyst has been the promise and belief that our employees have shown in us.
Please list the popular products/solutions that make your company standout from the competition.
We are serving across various verticals like:
- Embedded software
- Automotive
- AI
- Mobile Application
With specialized service modules ranging from:
- Product Engineering – Koanex ensures built-in stability, self-organizing project teams, overlapping development phases, multi-learning, subtle control, and organizational transfer of learning. These six attributes fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, forming a fast-flexible process for new product development.
- Design Consulting – Koanex believe in micro level value driven consulting, where we apply design thinking to organize requirement priories to lead with extraordinary improvements in the product/service.
- Quality Engineering – Koanex provide the capability leverage of our seasoned testing COE, enabling speed to market in QA cycles while ensuring robust quality.
- DevOps Transformation – Koanex drive business process innovation through process consulting and automation to deliver value beyond short term labor arbitrage benefits.
Koanex is developing new application for detecting dyslexia in kids which will be a state-of-the-art integration of the technology. The tools that will be used are as follows:
- Clock Drawing test
- Drawing Test
- Spelling Test
As the founder and CEO, what is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the IT industry and the related market?
The pandemic will fade away and we will forget the year 2020 as the year passes-by. The pandemic has really helped all the founders/companies small or big to think differently and all have adopted to the scenario now.
The culture at Koanex, true to its origins, is self-inspired rather than being dictated. We believe in applying elemental wisdom to nurture our talent pool and align to our delivery methodology with ground realities. This is the mantra which will help us to thrive in any situations.
As an experienced leader in the IT sector, according to you, how necessary is it to align one’s business with the latest technological developments?
Koanex sees the next 10 years as crucial in shaping the next tech revolution. With more and more devices gaining intelligence, deep tech innovation would lead the way towards delivery of last mile innovation to end-users. At Koanex, we are optimistic about the disruption that we will get to serve with 360-degree intelligence as a service. Koanex is on a mission to provide and create Intelligent products/services for the 4th Industrial Revolution.
The main core of Koanex is the Flexibility to ramp up and ramp down requirements and resources to align with business needs. Koanex applies a storyline to scattered cases of requirements, teams & programs as a comprehensive whole to deliver a tech driven profitable outcome.
Koanex want to be leaders in redefining the traditional approach of outsourcing. Unlike traditional outsourcing, we want to provide extraordinary to our customers by investing our profits into the design of talent in India. By educating our employees with our in-house academy and providing an incredible work environment, we are fully committed to empowering talents in emerging markets.
How do you envision on sustaining Koanex’s competency in India’s cutthroat and volatile startup ecosystem?
We are determined to become an engineering driven company by putting the engineer/innovator/techie at the heart of our system and culture. Growing up in the industry, we aspire to make Koanex as an effective force in implementing innovation and partnering with product vendors to bring solution effectiveness that delivers qualitive and quantifiable outcomes.
One of the challenges facing India is that the services space is at risk of commoditization of the workforce. In contrast products are appreciated more than services even though no one wants to buy or fund risk-taking products.
We believe we should not discount our people. Our PM on many instances has made it clear that our people are our biggest strength. If that is true why do we avoid recruiting talents who have had career gaps, early failures, low CGPA etc. The industry has been recycling the cream layer coming from premier institutions and not taking advantage of the existing available talent.
Koanex beliefs in hiring talent, who love challenges and adapts to the need of the mission/goal at hand. Koanex recently hired a candidate with 9 years of gap and convinced our client to proceed with the assignment. The result? That person was selected to lead the team and has been one of our fastest learners. We have the talent in our country and have utilized the same to reach global markets, it is me we believe in them. To elevate, not to exploit!
What would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into the IT services industry?
Learn at your 9AM to 5PM as much as you can, read, research, and validate your concepts. When the calling comes, and you will need all strength, rest and grit to deliver. Believe in own strength
