IncrementumX

Helping companies grow exponentially across geographies leveraging Digital, People and Alliances.

Chief Executive Officer

DIRO Business Solutions Pvt Ltd

We bring businesses and customers together. 

We believe in harnessing the collective intelligence of human mind and the power of technological advancements in delivering sustainable value to businesses and their customers. 

DIRO focuses on Innovation Factory (taking ideas, that solve business problems, to market), Global Marketing / GTM Services, Business Growth Advisory, Idea Funding.

http://www.diroglobal.com

Founder

Qiu Inc Holdings

♦ International Business Development
♦ Strategic Alliances,Due-diligence and Deal sourcing
♦ International expansion - Capital, Network, Knowledge and People
♦ Expansion: People, Infrastructure for global expansion
in Europe, US, South America, South Africa, Middle East, India, SE Asia,
Japan and Australia

2007: Relocated to Singapore to explore business opportunities.
Probably over paid for services and put under effort to go after business.

2008: Through an investment group, got involved in the digital signage wave going on in
Asia. Finding companies with contracts, introductions.half of 2008 witnessed the recession. Survived. Barely.

2009: Spent a lot of time at the gym since most clients(Startups) where not doing much
or had evaporated into thin air. IN addition, moved the
Qiu Inc model more mid market to focus on midsize firms. Locked in Europe, Brazilian,African, Japanese, Indian
and US business partners.

2010: Wanted to test out the expansion platform created by Entrepreneurs who are globally
dispersed and get a kick out of helping clients win in their market/or set of markets. Brought
CAV Asia - Branch/spin off investment from CAV Japan to Singapore markets.

Focused less on Qiu Inc and more on CAV Asia. With 30K in the bank, increased revenue
with 0 full time employees to around $800K+ in 14 months.(Contracts with all large consumer electronics retailers in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia)

2011/2012: Having put the CAV Asia business on auto pilot by June 2011. Mind was itching to do
something else. Started an Ad-network, aggregated other websites and inventory to push it to around 260Mn+ users worldwide. At peak was doing around 80-90M impressions a day.

Went back to soul searching. My mistakes are my skills. My knowledge is 
what i don’t know YET.Core skills are understanding and evaluating business
problems, finding collaborators -co-founders, building team & development of an out of the box solution that will annihilate competition.

Managing Director

MindWave Solutions

Advisory geared towards Business Development/JV opportunities and Technology M&A

Since Feb 3rd results achieved:
✓ 130+ prospective investors sourced - Private placement team - Down stream of more than 120 prospects
✓ 5 member advisory team which is world class put into the company
✓ 1 MOU established with the largest healthcare group in Kerala
✓ Internal PMO resource was hired through referral

Advisor | Investor

IndigoEdge Management Consultancy Pvt Ltd

Qiuinc and IndigoEdge have a strategic alliance which enables SME's and Start-up's expand and roll out internationally a lot quicker and aids the go-to-market for companies coming into any of the Asian markets. Complimentary networks,skill sets and knowledge bases.We offer end-to-end services for our clients like Corporate Finance support, JV/M&A advisory, Market and Opportunity assessment, Business Development and Sourcing  advisory,Operations and turnaround consulting, etc..

Business Associate

EGUARDIAN

EGUARDIAN has evolved to become one of the leading information technology solutions providers in Asia with more than 100 employees in 4 countries. EGUARDIAN's solutions and services, inclusive of Acceleration, Availability, Security, Storage and Virtualisation address crucial aspects of business continuity, availability, security and regulatory compliance.

Riverbed Technology

Independent Consultant for OPNET Technologies in Asia. 
First guy in the market for the then NASDAQ listed firm.
Business Development and Strategy - Asia Pacific and Japan

OPNET was acquired much later (2012) by Riverbed Technology

Business Development Director - Asia

Wipro Technologies

International Business Development - Japan and India.
Managed relationships with customers in the Engineering/Automotive/R&D and Banking and Financial services sectors.

Sabbatical from Wipro to do an MBA from INSEAD in 05.

Business Development Manager

CEO @ IncrementumX | Creative Entrepreneur | Growth Consultant

Sandeep Balaji is a serial entrepreneur and executive with experience in Consumer Internet, Enterprise Software, Media, Consumer Electronics and Engineering.

He has multiple years of experiences in B2B - Large Enterprises and consults with them off and on to help them solve challenges and also executing winning strategies.
He is a gadget geek and relishes the privilege of big picture thinking for solving tough problems

✓ Biz Dev and Operational leader
✓ Finding tier 1 talent, building and motivating geographically dispersed teams.
✓ Fluent in 7 languages
✓ Alma Mater: INSEAD,CUSAT and PSBB
✓ Blue-chip and Business creating and building experience in SE Asia, Japan, Europe and South Asia
✓ Angel Investor and Advisor to startups and mid-sized companies across industries


Passions : People, Reading, Travel , Sports, Golf & Food Connoisseur.

Builder Power & Product Hunters!

Thanks Pavithran Chidambaram and Indian VCs for organising the product hunt Meetup. Thanks to Lightspeed India as well.

It was very interesting being in the room with young and veteran builders explaining the Nissan’s of how to go about building & lunching on product hunt, when do you do this, how to time the 🚀 and what to expect interms of traffic-virality, and also be apprehensive that PH is a PR- open the world to your product and not directly correlated to your customer acquisition funnel.
And at the other side of the equation we had a lot of product hunter enthusiasts who look at find kewl new products and upvoting the same. Definitely Product Hunt has gone through a massive amount of growth and focused strategies in the last several years but being “Product of the Week” & “Product of the day” are soo coveted that it can result in a lot of snowball effects.

Thanks to a lot of my friends Venkatesh M. Don Peter & Robin Alex Panicker, to making it.
And chief evangelist and advisor/ mentor Kevin William David who has helped more founders than I can imagine!

Adding events in Bangalore with high energy reaffirms why are are squarely a product and builder nation!


#Meetup
#ProductHunt

Sandeep Balaji

Some of the things I did(did not) focus on in my 30's

1. Have a lot of fun (Not that kind that gets you into jail!) - I still continue to have fun - but different and muted

2. Chased a lot of hype cycles - in business, in industries, people who at the outset displayed Razzmatazz - Most of these don't really compound or add too much of value in the mid-longer term

3. Cross functional & Global experience - I travelled a lot, met a lot of interesting people, tried to understand nuances a bit more in cultures, food, lifestyle, music (I still goto a lot of music festivals and concerts every year)

4. Drill down on building teams - the art and science behind it. I felt always comfortable having extended teams and vendors for the first 2-4 of my entrepreneurial journey. But like Naval writes - there are only three kinds of leverage - People, Capital and Tech (That's it)

5. Deep curiosity in business models, what would the future be like - Mental models (some to be flushed down the toilet and others rehashed) I love technology so i don't restrict myself to just the internet - Enterprise, Media, Deep tech, Material sciences, etc

6. I think I was a super extrovert and people collector/ borderline people pleaser - But somewhere down that mid 30's, I think I changed or metamorphosed into a conted-introverted extrovert.

7. Meaning of money & Making money - Both of these things are very different. Guess i grew a little bit more altruistic, forgave people more and probably din't forgive myself as much as I should have. Making money became a lot easier because:
 a. My meaning of money was clearer
 b. Introspection of skills and strengths/ attitude to really what are my spikes (In the 99% in the world, i firmly believe that none of us are born to be ordinary)

8. Gave up on relationships more than once :)

9. Din't make sport & Fitness a habit even though i still play a lot of sports but could have definitely been more agile.

10. Realised the three things that calms me down - Being on a golf course, reading & monitoring my breathing (with loose meditation concepts i learnt while in school)

11. Understand the basic difference between Customer Empathy & What you really want (Urgently!)

12. Deal with personal loss (probably the toughest thing one has to go through in life!)

To summarize - My adventures & misadventures taught me - 
Experience(s) compounded over time with compassion and respect for others leaves you in a better place than you were in before.

Ps: This was in an email sent out to a cocky 30 year old growth founder. I had some mind space and clarity to think through these points and reflect. Not sure if it would benefit anyone.

#Musings
#Life

Summer 🥵 has already been here!

Perfect time for mangoes.
In any or every form!

All through my life of growing up in India, I used to look forward to “Mango” season. Yeah, we all do agree that the heat has increased many fold over the last thirty years.
But a chilled pure Mango juice or shake does keep the heat albeit temporarily.

Everywhere you go in India, there are different types of Mangoes.
Sweet, Sweeter, Sweetest!

No wonder it’s called the king of fruits!

Orginally it was derived from Tamil- “mangkay” .
And later went on to be called “manga”

Maaza and Frooti are the iconic brands

I feel like having some more 🥭 

#summer
#cooler
#mangoes

Social Media
Something a lot of companies- especially B2B struggle with.

What to do?

How frequently?

Can it be made fresh( non- repetitive)?

What is our ROI?

How do I find the right influencers?

The diagram I have shown below is from the latest Hubspot survey of marketeers globally.

The #1 rule in doing social media for B2B is
- Buyer is human
- Stakeholders are human

So draft content & creative to get them to feel more about the :
- Problem they are facing 
- Problem what they are not aware
- How can you/ your business add value.

Everything else is tactics and diversification!

Human.

Value offering.


You do the above consistently & precisely then you will create or become “thought leadership”.

A lot of B2B companies post very sporadicly and don’t have a well thought through content calendar.

Want some tips on how to develop a calendar quickly, then DM me.

#socialmedia
#B2B
#contentcreative

Sometime in 2017

I learnt of a professor from one of the good institutes in Bangalore,
building straws from coconut 🌴 leaves.

And this guy sound like an inventor and had failed in inventions and business before. 🥺

I wanted to meet him, hear his story and what he told his management studies.

He was quite busy with a lot of PR and Media attention. I managed to speak to him a few times- kept in touch over sometime.

#Sustainability is not going to go away. India and our jugaadu can solve 1000s of problems in relatively simple ways. Kudos to the folks building in this front. Let me know if you need any help, contacts or just want to brainstorm.

As for the professor of Sunbird Coconut Leaf Straws .
I need to meet you sir! And congrats on what you have achieve soo far.

Cheers


#Sustainbility
#Straws
#Cocunut

“What was your backup plan?”

“What if you don’t make it?! , then what would you do?!”

I sat down with a coupe of ex-employee’s of a Unicorn and Soonicorn business recently.

And those two questions were common ones I was asked in both instances.

It actually made me think back in time.

2007
- Startup or Starting up or getting to do a business on your own.

Was not a fad or a thing!

There were a few things that I felt would keep me sleeping well:

- Cash 💰 reserve, I had saved up some money. Gave me a 12-15 month runway ( had some student debt to pay)

- I could fall back on doing a BD role in tech - since most of my background until then was taking companies into market

- I could live very frugally and stretch my runaway for another 3-3.5 months ( if required )

- I knew I had a decent enough network and could find a value adding short time consulting role ( push comes to shove?! )

- Worse case - Go home if my runaway vaporises, cool the heals and figure out the next step

#backupplans
#entrepreneurialjourney
#startup

Too many DIFFERENT Straws?!

I have had two experiences working with large teams/ groups of people.

Both ending disastrously 💥

Some people ask me what’s the optimum number ?

For a startup or build a business.

I think the number is firmly < 4 ( or maximum 4)

2010
- I put together a bunch of cross functional people (6)
In 🇸🇬 
There was a gap of offering several services in a combination to SME’s
We got more than 4 clients ( first 20 days)
Overall billed over s$55k ( in first 5+ months)
And then we had a quick death

Primary issues:
In ability for people to juggle multiple responsibilities 
Not everyone was available as and when required
Some of them saw this as a pure side gig
Few used this as a platform to do more free lance projects.
- Overall lack of “cohesiveness”

2023
- Majorily responsible for bringing together some top notch people(7)
In 🇮🇳 
Great marketing need of offering strategy / design to execution
We got 3-4 clients ( First 45-60 days)
Overall billed over 56L ( $67K) over 4 months
Other downstream revenue ( ~80L+ )
State of Limbo and then hastened split

Primary Issues
Hubris and Ego
Over promising to certain customers
Selection of some wrong customers
Cashflow issues ( at some point)
Feedback - No consistent feedback given to all parties & some avoidance of feedback
Business model and Pricing model flaws for certain engagements
Political jostlings affecting  performance


These were two opportunities where I was part of the “eye of the storm” 😎😂
And I was not a full time player on both occasions even though I contributed to majority of revenue.

Key learnings for me:
- Clearly define roles
- Don’t ever look at more than “3” or “4”
- Active feedback and proactive leadership 
- Select only people who are “worthy” of being in a team <Attitude trumps all>

#Team
#Disaster
#Attitudeoveranything

State of Flow

Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.

It’s difficult to be in a state of flow all the time. Sometimes it occurs in short bursts and some people have arrangements which gets them in that state to dive into their pursuits ( Entrepreneurial, Artists, Creators, Traders, etc)
Hugh unlikely you will get into a flow state sitting behind a cubicle day in and day out.

I have a couple of examples I have attached below:
Capoeira -Brazilan martial art, body- mind moves so smoothly and there is an extraordinary amount of creativity 
Varkala - It’s one of those places that helps me get into a flow state 


#Flow
#Seemless
#Balance

I grew up in the 80s and 90s in India.

Some of the points in this article hit a spot. The middle class seems to be in a no man’s Zon’s right now.

Contribution to the overall economy has come down as a percentage, higher taxes, high inflation, salaries not increasing as required.

This is not a good sign of things. And with AI, automation and other factors this is going to get tougher and tougher in the next decade or so.


And every brand out there is trying their best to sell into the middle of the pyramid audience!


https://lnkd.in/gjidz7kD

#India
#Middleclass
#Then&now

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