Sidharth Jain, from Bhadwa, Madhya Pradesh, is the creator of GraffersID, a firm that provides IT staff augmentation services to a wide range of clients. Sidharth Jain tried unsuccessfully to obtain financing for his web app development business GRAFFERSID.
GraffersID provided IT services to startups, but he couldn’t get investors since he was a first-time entrepreneur from the little village of Bhadwa (near Indore).
But Sidharth, who had an ace up his sleeve, says,”While expanding my team at GraffersID and working on client app projects, we also produced an innovative product.” We created an image processing software in which you could take a photo of a food and the program would give you its name, calorie value, ingredient list, and recipe.”
Taking this product to the B2C (business-to-consumer) market, however, was too expensive for the B2B (business-to-business) firm.
He explains, “”An investor we spoke with said they didn’t want to invest in us, but they were happy to buy our image processing solution.”
According to Sidharth, the investor, who he does not identify, responded, “Sounds excellent, let’s make the transaction,” and finalized the purchase for $1 million.
GraffersID was able to grow the startup into a non-cloud, Resource-as-a-Service (RaaS) initiative as a result of this unexpected departure. It is now an IT augmentation firm that specializes in onboarding remote, verified React and Node.js engineers and provides contract services to clients.
According to Sidharth, the firm began in Indore in 2018 with an initial investment of roughly Rs 50,000 and is currently generating yearly revenue of more than Rs 8 crore.
“We deal with 58 Series A+ financed customers, 14 unicorns, 10 Fortune 100 firms, and over 50 ideation stage projects,” he says, claiming GraffersID is a lucrative initiative.
GraffersID’s notable clients include Gojek, Coca-Cola, Duolingo, Patreon, and others.
Sidharth says, GraffersID converted a few clients by providing product and tech-related content on LinkedIn and other social networking sites on a regular basis. The startup also implemented SEO marketing to convert the clients. He says, “There was a demand among entrepreneurs for a solution that handled all of their urgent IT and web app development needs.”
Sidharth began working as a software developer at Accenture after graduating from Thakur College of Engineering and Technology (and later, IIT Bombay).
He was ultimately given the option to go to the United States.
“At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to accomplish with my life.”
“However, my father died of a heart attack a few months before I was meant to travel abroad, and I had already resigned my position at Accenture,” he explains.
Sidharth wanted to return to India but was confused what to do next. Sidharth recalls that during those uncertain times, he enjoyed publishing some of his ideas on LinkedIn and contributing his thoughts on how companies may manage their IT difficulties. He says, “Gradually, more and more entrepreneurs began reading my articles and contacting me, stating they were having similar problems with their firms and wondered if I could help them.”
He founded GraffersID after failing to meet the numerous requests he got on LinkedIn from entrepreneurs seeking assistance with their IT issues.
Sidharth saw that many businesses experienced similar IT challenges as they grew.
They would employ IT firms to construct apps, but the vendors would make lofty promises and then fall short. The apps produced by IT agencies encountered several technical hurdles and flaws, or were not market-ready.
Not every founder is technically or product-oriented, nor can they create apps in-house.
As a result, they outsource app development, albeit with disappointing outcomes.
Unable to handle all of the requests from startups seeking his assistance with technical product demands, Sidharth began outsourcing some projects to trustworthy developers who would execute his product development strategy.
As the number of requests grew, Sidharth began hiring engineers and expanding his team to directly handle these demands, laying the groundwork for the launch of GraffersID.
Over the course of four years, the Bhadwa native created a workforce of 100+ individuals based in Indore and serving clients all over the world. Selling the image-processing app in the first two years let him realize his ambition for GraffersID.
Another enabler–and maybe the most long-lasting–is his philosophy of making every product a success.
“In my opinion, every thing we create should be a smashing success.
GraffersID plans to expand its staff to 500+ persons and open offices in Dubai and the United States in the future.
It also plans to play a part in the larger $531 billion industry for IT services outsourcing (according to Beroe Inc figures), even as competitors such as CrewScale, Toptal, and Uplers focus on IT staff augmentation and offshore development services.
