Wow! 6 years of Incentius! Sujeet Pillai September 11, 2019

 

This is such a clear indication of how busy we were that we missed acknowledging our 5th anniversary.
Nevertheless, so here we are, completing our 6th year. I couldn’t be prouder to announce that
since the first year, we have continually grown and evolved as a company. At this moment, when we are all on
cloud nine, I would like to share our little story as to how it all started.

Background:

It all started during the time when Amit and I used to hang out for a couple of drinks every month at one
of our favourite joints and talk about all sorts of lemons life was throwing at us.
Dubeyji (Yeah! That’s what we call our Director of Finance – Mohit Dubey), who had recently shifted to Noida to take care of his
family business, used to join us on the occasional skype chats. Amit & I have known each other since 1999 from our time as batchmates
at IIT Bombay. We met Dubeyji in 2004 in our early professional days as we all started our consulting careers in the same company.
All of us were among the first few employees to join the recently started India operations for the company, which gave us a lot of
initial exposure to project ownership, people management and client management. Reminiscing about our time in consulting and the
challenges associated with different kinds of situations at the start of our careers was our favourite pastime.

Ideas abound, 2006-2012:

We were a trio that always had an entrepreneurial itch about us. In those days, we met on a monthly
basis to talk about the wacky business ideas we had and try and how we could take them to market.
Looking back, our early ideas may have had potential however, they were not well-formed. More importantly,
it’s now evident that we lacked complementary skills and real-world experience in running a company.

Fast forward a few years and, Jaitex exports (Dubeyji’s family business) was doing pretty well; Amit was
close to making Associate Principal at ZS, and I had moved to a more core technology role and had managed
a couple of early-stage start-ups. Before we knew it, it was 2013, and instinctively, we knew that said entrepreneurial
itch had to be scratched sooner rather than later. When you perform your first strike, always pick the move
that you know the most. Healthcare, Incentive Compensation, Sales Force Analytics and technology had to be the
core competencies of our first venture.

The intervening 5-6 years had given us the required complementary skills and experience, which was key to pioneering
this dream of ours. Amit doubled up on knowledge in the pharma SFE domain, Dubeyji was ready with valuable seed
capital and real-world accounting and finance knowledge and I finally had the confidence to run the operations of
a company independently. Talking to clients, day in and day out, understanding the practical problems of the industry
and realizing the gaps between their expectations and reality is what we focused on as our vision.

Incorporation, 2013:

On the 9th of September 2013, Incentius – a new-age technology-focused company, was incorporated, and we were ecstatic.
Our initial goal was to use our strengths and become implementation partners of several ICM players and SPM players in
the healthcare space and also provide them with other analytics and operations support. We started talking to several clients
but received constant feedback on the challenges they were facing with the existing players in the space. The primary concern
that was shared with us was around the lack of intuitiveness of some of the existing solutions and also the significant focus
on an expensive outsourcing model. Hence our vision evolved towards the capabilities and services we provide today. Targeting
delivering high-end analytical solutions, developing advanced technology solutions for complex business process management
systems and creating in-depth analytical models along with data-driven reports for enterprises were the key aspects we focused on.
Our strategy was to be a service organization which focused on providing technical support to various established consulting
companies that were trying to expand their portfolios. In mid-2014, Amit joined us, and we focused on more advanced projects which
helped clients solve complex problems and fructify their technology vision in complex business processes. Incentius focused on
engagement models and helped various small consulting firms deliver their projects in a unique rapid prototyping first strategy.

Today, 2019:

I take pride in the fact that today Incentius has close to 25 clients and has delivered more than 100 projects over the years.
The clients that we started with on day one of Incentius are still with us. I am particularly thankful to all my clients who
showed their faith in us and believed that we would push, build and deploy every requirement of theirs. You are our best critics
and have helped us grow an inch every day. A company is nothing without brilliant people, and I’d like to thank every one of our
current and former employees who contributed immensely to bring us to today. They are the true assets of Incentius.
Lastly, I would like to thank my Partners – Amit and Dubeyji, for their constant support and for sticking together through our great
and sometimes truly scary times to make our little dream into reality.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support and love of my wonderful family – My amazing wife and my
extremely handsome sons.

Cheers!