Siva Paturi and his wife had moved from the US 7 years back. Like every family shifting there, they also faced immense trouble settling in a new city and country, trying to find reliable, good quality and trustworthy service providers like drivers, plumbers, electricians, caterers, fitness instructors etc. Over a casual conversation, he shared his concerns with Shikha Kapoor who immediately seemed to connect to them. She had herself faced similar issues when she moved to Bangalore about 6 years back. Speaking to a few friends, she realized that most of her friends and colleagues who migrated from other cities have had similar experiences to share, especially about their initial few months.
Shikha and Siva both realized that the problem needed to be solved using technology. And since they realized it the most, they started to solve the problems. Thus, the idea of MySahay was born. Their vision is to simplify the painful process of looking for appropriate professionals for busy urban customers. Not just this, they intend to give providers from this un-organized sector an avenue to showcase their skills and earn based on their performance, thereby helping to organize this sector using technology.
MySahay is currently in beta stage and available in Bangalore and Hyderabad only.
This company, which has the potential to be a game changer for Indian households, will create employment opportunities to thousands of service providers as long as they are honest and ready to provide reliable service. They are making the first global platform in the B2C space to come out of India. "Our research tells there us that there is a huge need for a similar platform in several developing countries," says Siva, a person passionate to solve real world problems.
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Siva Paturi & Shikha Kapoor - Founders, MySahay.com[/caption]Siva has a master's degree in computer science and Math from Indiana State University and a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Osmania University. While Shikha went to IIT Delhi for her Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science. They have both worked with corporates for a large part of their lives. They are in talks to partner with corporates and apartment societies to build trusted communities of providers and customers for MySahay. "We are also working on partnering with service specific provider agencies, and help them also grow using our technology," adds Shikha.
They are using a combination of open source and commercially available technologies to build a reliable, secure, robust and scalable platform. In addition to this, they are also developing algorithms for search, recommender systems, performance based compensation and security. "We are building a set of mobile applications on android platform and will work on iOS next," says Siva. They have a small but a strong team of engineers, mostly alumni of various IITs, NITs, and University of Michigan. Their Hyderabad operations are handled by 2 people while the rest of the team is based out of Bangalore and ready to launch here soon.
They have tested the beta website with our database of 500 providers and about 200 select customers. With their services being launched recently in Hyderabad, they have initiated a few campaigns where the citizens can making MySahay a path breaking venture. They have put in place a cooperative model where citizens collaborate together and are collective shareholders called MySahay Ambassador Program. The citizens can also contribute to them and help build the community of trusted service providers.
The company has been selected for NASSCOM 10k Startups. They plan to expand to all metros in India within the next 6-8 months, and go global within a year of launch. The company is bootstrapped but looking for investment. As a message for future entrepreneurs, Shikha says, "Be persistent, and have a clear vision, and more importantly focus on execution. If you are passionate and optimistic, you will find ways to achieve your dream. We have been receiving lots of support from the ecosystem in India, so tap into all possible resources to reach your goal. Also, help other entrepreneurs grow, and give back to the ecosystem in the ways that you can."
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