The Silicon Review ^Asia

Although Consio will be agnostic to any industry, the company puts its initial focus on the creation industry, i.e. the industry of architects, designers, construction professionals, engineers, game developers, etc. Consio says that the industry is plagued with multiple disciplines and sub-disciplines with each team using its own tools and standards for a piece of the job/project. This results in loss of information, project delays and budget overruns due to various transition points and various team members receiving it. In the current market, Project Managers end up doing repetitive tasks and using non-productive point solutions to achieve the end result.

Consio keeps the information alive and connected throughout each stage of the project with a unique context based approach that keeps the key metadata of a project relevant and available to the right project teams to achieve faster results, reduce wastage and improve efficiency. Consio is the pathway to truly automate your project management systems by leveraging many unique concepts implemented within to achieve the Autonomous Project Life-cycle Management System.

In conversation with the leading lights of Consio, Kunal Rao and Kesari Payneni

Q. How is the technological and business market scenario in India?

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and it will surpass many of the large world economies in the near future. With India’s ever-growing population, there is a constant race to provide supporting infrastructure and to become capable of sustaining such growth. UN projects India’s population to surpass that of China’s in the next few years with a population of 1.8 Billion by 2050 and 2 Billion people by 2100.

Moreover, India is going to be the 3rd largest construction market by 2030. It is also projected that India will become the 3rd largest consumer of cars by 2020, and close to half a billion internet users. The opportunity for technology to solve specific things that will provide real socio-economic change in India is the key. The largest opportunity by far where technology can fill the gap and help improve the lives of people and businesses is in India, and this is where we see a huge opportunity across all industries in the autonomous project management space.

Q. Despite the peak market competition, do you think budding entrepreneurs can still make their own way?

India is definitely the land of opportunities. The market is not easy. Every technology provider needs to understand the mindset, the technology needs to scale to the masses, be economical and have the ability to adapt to Indian ingenuity. Competition is good; it helps to create more innovative solutions. As entrepreneurs, you also need to think about the profitability of the business. Since the world is moving towards SaaS based B4B, and B4C platforms, the upfront cost is always high. Programs like Startup India are really helpful for any entrepreneur trying to pursue his or her dreams.

Q. What is your approach towards guiding your company to reach global or universal standards?

CONSIO was built with one thing in mind - “Keep it Simple”. This allows all our users from any part of the world managing any scale of project to gain immediate value. We are industry agnostic, support multiple languages, and enable a marketplace to share knowledge amongst our subscribers/users. We currently have 130+ subscribers from 7 countries. Our customers range from single users to large reputed organizations. We use state of the art technology to host our service and have been completely transparent about our progress as a company with all our customers.

Q. How was the experience when you were working on your first project?

I must admit that the first customer is very important as they can really shape the way the product’s roadmap will be from that point. We were lucky enough that our first customer was willing to openly share feedback, and thanks to our strong team, we were able to quickly meet their expectations. Our first customer was not from India, and this really enabled us to follow very strict international standards for everything we did. I firmly believe that we wouldn’t be where we are now if it wasn’t for our first client.

Q. Between ever-increasing market sophistication, needs, and diversified customer base, how do you manage to serve the needs of highly volatile market?

We do this by identifying the real pain that the customer is having and then map it with our platform and show the value. If the conversation is just about price then you have lost the battle. The discussion needs to be about value, and that is what is the key to surviving in a highly volatile market.

Q. Do you have any new products ready to be launched?

We do. We have new features constantly being added to the Consio Platform, and we are launching a new product under the CONSIO umbrella in May 2019.

Q. As a question on sustainability, where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

For us, it’s all about getting more and more users/subscribers/customers to use our platform. We expect to hit 3000 users managing over 300 projects on the Consio Platform in 2 years.

The Founding Duo

Kunal Rao, Co-founder & CEO

Kunal is a highly effective software & solutions executive with 18 years of experience specialising in Enterprise based transformation solutions technologies. Before co-founding Consio, Kunal held multiple senior positions in many enterprise software companies. Kunal holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from University Of Minnesota. He has lived and worked across USA, Europe and Asia.

Kesari Payneni, Co-founder & CTO

Kesari is an architect by trait. He has over 12 years of experience working in the architecture and construction industry implementing and managing innovative technologies and workflows. He has worked in the field as an architect in USA, South East Asia, and India. He is an author of the book “BIM Specifics” documenting the best practices to follow while implementing 3D Technology. He has a master’s degree in architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology.

“Be transparent, over-deliver on promises, and continue to make the customer successful by adding value through the technology platform that we provide. Customer Success is not just a skill that we look for; it’s the ethos of our company.”

Website:www.consio.io