 Ghan Shyam has come up with a software solution called Kometa Intellect which aims to provide cybersecurity accessible and affordable to all. They do research and development and implementation of cybersecurity as well as software and proof of concept development for the government. Currently they are working with one of the leading edutic company in Pune. Welcome to yet another edition of Changemakers. High quality cybersecurity services are needed to protect businesses and individuals from the increasing threat of cyber attacks. These services help protect against malicious software, malicious actors and other online threats. They also provide protection from data breaches and other security incidents but providing high quality cybersecurity services while making it affordable and accessible to all is a big challenge. One entrepreneur who has taken up this challenge and trying to make difference is Mr. Ghan Shyam Agarwal the co-founder and CEO of Kometa Intellect. Welcome Mr. Ghan Shyam. Thank you. Can you tell us, can you tell us more about yourself and your passion for computers and how it has influenced your decision to start Kometa Intellect? Sure. So I was very much interested in computers from a very early age. I think my father bought a computer when I was only one year old and since the childhood only I have been seeing and seeing and working around computers. So that's how I got the passion of it and in college there was this very nice environment of the startups and everything. The professors were all very helpful and they encouraged us to learn and try to innovate. So that's how I thought of starting a company and that's how Kometa started. I registered it in the year 2019 and that's how it began. Great. Your belief in their power to transform the world and make it better places inspiring. It's evident that your passion has driven you to establish Kometa Intellect. Ghan Shyam, can you share your experience of participating in Smart India Hackathon and how it has impacted your entrepreneurial journey? Sure. So Smart India Hackathon was, it was a very great experience and it was actually my first experience in the team building aspect. So earlier I was working and I was this very very much solo entrepreneur whatever I did, I did all on my own. But when we participated in S I H we were a team of five and I had to manage my team. I was the leader and there that was the first experience of how to manage your team, how to encourage your team. So you know entrepreneurship is not something you can do solo. It's a team exercise. So you have to take your team forward. So that's that was the very key experience there. And also when it was online the year when I participated in S I H that was the COVID year and it was online, but meeting mentors over E meet and everything. It was a very nice experience. They were very highly skilled experts in their respective fields. They gave very useful insights. It was great talking to them. Thank you for sharing your experience of participating in Smart India Hackathon. What valuable lessons did you learn from the experience and how has it shaped your approach towards building Kometa intellect? So as I mentioned from Smart India Hackathon team building and taking your team leading your team was a very key takeaway for me from there and meeting the mentors, they gave me very useful insights. Some insights like I couldn't have imagined it myself myself in the college, right? So in my software, they they pointed out a few things like this was so and so this was so and so. And I was like blown away completely. So how can someone think in that way also? So the mentors were very great. And that was a point I decided. Okay, mentorship is not decided. I learned that mentorship is is the key, right? You cannot take it solo. You have to have mentor, you have to have a team and then everything moves together. That's right. In the startup, you need to have good mentor and good team. Great. Yes. Tell us about Kometa intellect and services it provides in the cloud and security consultancy space. How do you differentiate yourself from other similar companies in the market? Sure. So Kometa intellect provides managed services primarily and by managed services, it means let's say there is a company, let's say any Facebook only, for example, so Facebook will need to have its own cloud infrastructure and everything. There will be a large team, a team of developers. So for us company of scale Facebook, it's feasible for them to have their own cloud experts who manage their cloud and everything. But for small or medium organizations, they need some external company to manage it for them. It's not economically viable for them to hire full time cloud experts and then do the management of the cloud. So we provide cloud management as a service. So what we do is we are guys manage our team manages their cloud for them. So let's say they have it in Azure or GCP, whatever. So we will let's say create and delete users where they're when their employees enter or leave organization. Let's say when a server goes down, we will restart it, all that kind of stuff. That is the cloud management part. Then in the security aspect, we we check we scan their cloud for vulnerability. We do something called penetration testing. It's very much popular in the security domain. So we test their applications. Then if they want us to review their code from a security point of view, we can do that as well. So those are some key things key services we provide. So your USP are providing high quality cyber security services that are affordable and accessible is your USB. So as the co founder and CEO of Kometa Intellect, what are your key responsibilities and the roles in the company? How do you envision leading the company towards achieving its goals and making a positive impact on the world? So as a CEO, my important role is to lead the team lead the company. And you know, how does the company proceed as a as a whole, right? So the company has its mission. And how does the company reach to its mission? And whenever you know, there is something change, there is a change in market. So not on not only me, my team has to look into it, whatever is going on, whatever latest changes are developments are in the market. So we have to take care of it. We have to look into it. And for my team, whenever that there is some change. So basically, you know, leading the team is one of my very important goals. And finding finding new clients, not not only finding new clients, but new areas of business. So we expand, you know, from our existing clients, we want more business. So we figure out how do we provide more services to the existing clients so that we can get more business from them. And also how do we expand to new markets, finding new clients? So recently, only we had our strategy developed to go overseas to abroad different countries. So for now, we are targeting Middle East, America, for as of right now, maybe Europe would not wouldn't be a very good choice. But certainly America, there also things are not very great, but but it's okay, we can go there. And Middle East is doing fine. So that's that's what strategy development, that's one of my key responsibilities. So your key responsibilities and roles showcase your leadership and vision for the company, your determination to achieve the company's goal, and make a positive impact on the world is commendable. Mr. Ganshiam, who are the target beneficiaries of Kometa Intellect Services? And why did you choose to focus on small to medium scale organization and government bodies? What unique challenges do you foresee in solving these specific segments? So as we saw, there are these large companies and large companies can themselves hire experts for for managing their infrastructure, they can always hire ethical hackers for doing the security testing and everything. So that's why we don't target large companies as of now, because there is nothing we can provide to them as of now. So small and medium scale companies, they require another party to do the infrastructure management for them. So that's a very sweet spot for us, we can provide a lot of services there. They really need all the services which we provide. That's about small and medium scale businesses and in government. So while I was in college only, I would say out of luck, I happened to meet the district collector, and they wanted something I could offer in the area of computers only. So from there only all this government business started. So then I registered the company and then they came up with more requirements and there was a lot I could offer. So especially government of Odisha, it's doing a lot of work in computer in the field of computer. So many of the services are being provided online previously for something you had to go to the, let's say any, any government body, you have to stand in a long queue and get your work done. But now a lot of work is getting is being done online. So there is a lot we can offer to government and having these connections from from an early age. So it's easier for me to go to government to whenever they want to have some proof of concept built, for example, or they want some some software, we are not really very large company, but we can build a lot of software for them. So that's what we offer to government. And in this specific segment, some key challenges are the market changes very fast. So if you go into operating system development, it's a rather stable market, you won't see a very fast, the changes are slow. But in cyber security, you know, everyday work is being done, everyday new vulnerabilities come up. So you have to stay up to date to keep up with the market. Also these there are these new cloud providers and vendors. Previously, there are only like three major Google Azure and AWS. But now there are like 10s 20s of them. So to keep up with the market to keep up with the changes, you really have to you have to be up to date with what is being provided, what is being offered, so that you can offer your services to the clients. So that that's about it. Yeah, that's great. We appreciate your strategic approach in serving these segments and foresee that you may face unique challenges in meeting their specific needs. Mr. Ganshiam, can you elaborate on the unique selling proposition of Kameda Intellect? How have you structured the organization to provide affordable and accessible service cyber security services without compromising on quality? Sure. So there are a few things which humans can do really great. Like there is no match of it for computers and humans. There are certain things a human has to do with current technology. So that's for the humans part. But what we have done is being being a new startup. What we have done is we have focused on robots. We have focused on building bots, computer bots who who do one thing and they do it great. So so we have developed these boards who do let's say they do some report some analysis, and then they send the reports to the client. So that's how we have structured our organization. So human resource is very expensive. And for a young startup, it's not very efficient, not even economically possible to hire a very good talent from the market. So we have focused ourselves on bots. So what's generate the reports, what to the automated testing code analysis, everything. So that's one of the USP and that's what differentiates us from many other players in the same segment. Yeah, great. So your USP is like a bot and it reflects your dedication to making cybersecurity accessible to all while maintaining the high standard. Well done. How did you go about customer acquisition? At initial stage, it must have been very challenging. What strategies did you adopt? So like I mentioned, I had found a great mentor and I found him through actually through startup Odisha program. So I was selected in startup Odisha in my college in the national level program and I went to an organization where the national level event was being held. And I met him there. His name is Anand Agrawal. He is my mentor currently and from a very long time actually. And he has been guiding me all along. So he helped me find key customers, the the initial customers, like you told me, finding the initial customer is very challenging because when you go to sell a cybersecurity service, people want some credential, right? You cannot just go and say, okay, I am so and so expert and I'll do everything for you. It just doesn't work like that. You have to show some previous work. So my mentor helped me in that. And like I said, the company itself was registered in 2019. But I was when I was in college until 2020, work was being done in the company. I went to college work in the company at the same time. It was all going good. But after finishing college, I took a job for like one and a half year, let's say. And recently only, I think three or four months ago only, we full swing went back into Kometa, the company. And when I went back, I again got in touch with my mentor and I requested him, okay, we are starting so and so and can you guide us what to do, how to acquire initial customers? And that's when he helped. And again, the government connections, as I mentioned, it also helped a lot. They're very helpful. You know, the state level government officials, even the state level, but I have been in touch with the state level a lot. So they are very helpful, very kind and you know, they provide business, they provide mentorship as well. So yeah, that's it. Really, it's good to know that you have got a right mentor and really appreciate like you registered the company in your third year itself and then went for a job for one and a half year, gained experience and came back to the start up. Great. Your approach to customer acquisition showcases your resilience and determination as an entrepreneur. Kudos to your efforts. Mr. Ganshiam, Kometa Intellect works closely with government bodies for building applications and proof of concepts. Can you share some examples of successful projects you have worked on with government bodies and how they have impacted their technology requirements? Sure. So very recently, only with one of the districts in Odisha here, we developed a project, a software suite for girl child care. It was under Betty Bachow, Betty Padaw scheme and the software what it did was you could, you know, Anganwadi workers, school teachers, everybody can gather information about the girl children and then data analysis can perform over it and various useful data points can be taken out, like whatever government needs government officials, rather they need these data input in order to take good decisions. So what software does is it crunches the feed level collected data and creates insights from it. And from those insights, they can take decisions. So we did that for the district government and now they are thinking about implementing it all over the state. So that's our work in progress. Great, congratulations Ganshiam and you are giving back to your society by your startup. It's evident that your projects have had a positive impact and we appreciate your contribution to the achievement of technology in the government sector. Ganshiam, the cloud and cyber security industry is constantly evolving. How do you plan to keep Kometa Intellect updated with the latest advancements, technologies and best practices in the field to ensure you stay competitive and continue to provide cutting-edge services to your customers? So, you know, we can approach this in two different forms. So first would be the personal growth. Personally, how do you grow yourself? How do you keep updated with the market? And the second would be how do you update your company with the changing market? So in a personal level, you know, there is this thing called T-shaped knowledge. So the vertical bar in T, it states it represents that you should have your knowledge very deep in in a few areas, in a few specific areas, you should have very deep knowledge. And in the like the horizontal bar of the T represents that you should have a little bit knowledge of everything so that you can run your company nicely. So I think during the college itself and even afterwards, that's more like a continuing thing. So my key area being cyber security, that's what I have been doing since like, I don't know, 10 years. So that's the vertical part. And I try to keep myself updated with the market, whatever changes are being going on. I follow journals, I follow news articles. And that's how I stay up to date with whatever changes are being made in the industry. Then about the company. So, you know, like I said, there are many different key cloud providers coming up. So you cannot expect your team to learn everything whatever is coming. But we always encourage our team to be flexible with learning. So, you know, if we hire a resource for AWS, then okay, he does AWS or he's fine. Okay, great. But we also encourage them to learn other things like maybe development, maybe Google Cloud. So if they are willing to learn, then we definitely encourage them because it always helps, you know, you don't know when you will get what client. So maybe our client now requires Google instead of AWS. So your resources must be compatible with the other providers also. And also that being said, you cannot expect your team to learn everything. So what we do is we keep hiring from the market for different other services, other kind of software available. So, you know, that's one way you can keep operated with the market. Yes. Yeah, as a dynamic industry, staying updated with the latest advancements, technologies and best practices in the cloud and cybersecurity field is crucial. Your commitment to keeping Kometa Intellect updated is commendable. Ganshyam, can you share some some of the biggest achievements or milestones of Kometa Intellect since its inception and how they have contributed to the company's growth and success? And what are your future plans and vision for the company? Sure. So first, important milestone, I would say is getting our first customer. So our mentor helped us get the first customer and that itself made us profitable in the first month of business. You know, I didn't even imagine that would be possible. I was expecting, okay, an investment period of at least six months, even though we are in services industry, but still one would expect an investment period of like at least six months or six months until you break even. So but that that wasn't the case with us. We were profitable since the first month of business itself. So I consider that as a big milestone and another milestone would be getting the the recently the girl child program software which we built that was again a milestone, you know, it makes me believe my life is valuable, you know, by contributing something to someone else's life positively, like for the girl children, we can do something, then it makes my and my colleague's life is valuable. That's what I believe. So that those are like some key milestones and moving our way forward, we believe like I already mentioned, we are trying to expand, we are trying to go global, whatever, you know, you need some good legal and financial financial as in chartered accountants and legal people who can help you with those specific areas because our area is software development consultancy. We are not a law firm, right? So we hire we don't hire. We are going to take consultancy from law firms from chartered accountant firms. So we are already in the process of doing that so that we can go global, you know, when you have a first international paying customer, you should be able to receive the money, right? And it is not as simple as it sounds. There are laws and which must be complied with. So that is all along the way. Yeah, great. Ganshyam, surely you will get your international customer very quickly. The achievements and the milestones of Commeta Intellect since its inception are impressive. They reflect your dedication and hard work in building the company's growth and success. Your future plans and vision for the company showcase your ambition and determination to achieve even great heights. Well done and we wish you get an international client very quickly. Mr. Ganshyam, as an experienced entrepreneur, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own venture in the cloud and security consultancy space or any other industry? What are the key learnings or tips you would like to share with them to help them succeed in their entrepreneurial journey? So I would say that having a mentor is really, really important. You know, it's not something that that would be overlooked. Please have a mentor. Be you might be of any age. It doesn't matter. You might be 20, you might be 40, whatever your business can be at any state. Maybe you are doing only POC now, or maybe you are already, you know, you have series A series B funding already done. Whatever be the case, a mentor is always helpful. You should have a mentor. That's what I would say. And try to get initial customers and try to be profitable. You know, that's an obvious one. Be become profitable, become break even at least as soon as possible. Try to find out early customer to market research well. And there are these lot of, you know, online resources available related to entrepreneurship. So don't just focus on what you are building, what you are doing. Also focus on there are these, you know, SWAT analysis, pastel analysis, all these things which can tell if you are going in the right direction. So these analysis help you find out your own weak points, your own strengths and who are your competitors, things like that. There are many online resources available. And what I have experienced, you know, in India currently, it's very, it's very suitable for entrepreneurship. You know, you go out, I met many people. They are very helpful, you know, they even government bodies, private bodies, mentors, incubation centers, wherever I go, I feel this, this huge strong energy for startup. So be a part of it and, you know, get excited, build what, build what you want to build, you know, it's a small life. So do what it, whatever you find exciting and do it well, you know, excel at it. That's what I say. Yeah, great. Having a mentor and acquiring an early customer are the key takeaways. Yeah, as an experienced entrepreneur, your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is invaluable. Your key learnings and tips for success in the cloud and security consultancy space or any other industry reflective of wisdom and experience, your willingness to share your insight is commendable and will surely inspire aspiring entrepreneurs to embark on their entrepreneurial journey with confidence. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts. Thank you, Mr. Nandini. Thank you. Thank you. It was very nice being here. Thanks. With that, we have come to the end of this edition of Changemakers, but stay tuned for more such inspiring stories. Till then, goodbye.