E-Paper
My entrepreneurial journey: Amit Gautam, director, UpsideLMS
PUNE
PUNE
Background
I pursued my engineering in Computer Science from NIT Kurukshetra and then went on to do my MBA from IIM Lucknow. After completing my MBA I joined Infosys in Pune, considered to be “the dream job” at the time. I decided to quit my job within 15 months of joining and joined an ed-tech startup instead, where I grew, and learnt, and finally pursued entrepreneurship in 2004, taking into account my previous work experience and the great growth opportunities I foresaw in the ed-tech space.
How I started
Doing things my own way and doing them better than others has been the driving force. My entrepreneurial journey is far from being a smooth ride. There have been many ups and downs along the way, and lots of learning for sure. Having an equally committed partner and co-founder made it both fun and easy. One thing I realised early on was that you can’t realise your dreams without trusting and empowering people who share your dreams and passions. Looking back, I remember reminding myself to be grounded, to be honest to myself and prepared to make some big sacrifices along the way. Sheer hard work, undiluted focus, trust in my people and always putting the end user at the centre - is really all that it took for me to set up UpsideLMS.
Upside LMS today
UpsideLMS started off with a modest setup, a small team and a great product we all believed in. Today, 15 years and 10 versions later, we have world-class offerings, ranging from mobile-apps, blended learning, social learning to reporting and analytics and free tech support.
Our product development roadmap is forever aligned to emerging industry trends and client requirements as well as changing user behaviors. Our latest innovation comes in the form of the 10th version of our learning management system (LMS) called UpsideLMS X.
In terms of growth, UpsideLMS today, has over 140 clients globally, with 55 in India, and a million users.
Hits & misses
As a company we have achieved a lot and ofcourse missed a fair share. A few notable hits have been all the amazing awards and recognition we have won as a product and company, like the Brendon Hall Group Awards we won last year - silver (for Excellence in Learning Management Technologies) and a bronze (for excellence in Mobile Learning Technologies).
With regards the misses, I think it would be the timing for our US market entry and the way we planned our sales and marketing. We planned very conservatively and tried to manage it from India. That was a mistake. This year we intend to have an office in the US and have very aggressive plans to hit US which is the largest market for e-learning products.
Vision
Bringing innovations to our product, processes, people, and our workplace as a whole is at the core of what we do. We are working hard on how we can leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning and other smart technologies to provide time and cost-effective solutions to our customers and users. We are looking forward to an aggressive global expansion over the next few months.
