Startup of the Month

In the August issue of Silicon India, Incognito Worldwide was named Startup of the Month. In a two-page article, Silicon India interviewed me about the serendipitous events that have played out since my arrival in India, where the Company (and its parent, Intech Creative LLC) is now, and where it plans to go in the near future.

The two-page article appears on page 18 of the August issue. 2014 issue, and is also online here.

Although the article focuses on my arrival in India, the company, our products, and the general nature of our origins, it does not delve into specifics. As such, I thought it appropriate to tell that story and give thanks to the team for their contributions to this recognition and to our ongoing success, as it is, and always has been, a combined and collaborative effort.

The Catalyst

The group of programmers I met at the cafe (as mentioned in the article) consisted of Sanjeev Aasoori and Nihanth Kandimalla. Seeing hidden talents in them, most notably their immense cognitive learning capabilities, and them seeing experience in me, and in no small measure because of our fast and building friendship and trust in each other, we had decided to do something together. Yet that initial goal of building the Intech products had, during the next 6 months, evolved into much more, as we began providing services intermittently to a growing list of friends and clients of Mr. Dugan's in the U.S.

The Start of Something Big

When I flew back to the U.S.A. in January of 2013 to renew my passport, I also began meeting with and securing sales agents and business partners. Upon my return to Bangalore in June 2013, we officially decided to turn the intermittent services we’d been providing into a full-service fulfillment company. First, largely through the efforts of Sanjeev and Nihanth, we built our initial team, and by September, had secured our offices near Commercial Street in Bangalore.

With positive developments and client satisfaction, I realized that we needed to spin off the company's services into their own entity -- under a new brand -- so as not to dilute the importance of those services or the products being developed by Intech Creative LLC. Thus, Incognito Worldwide India Pvt. Ltd. was born, co-founded by Sanjeev, Nihanth, and me, and powered by our department heads.

Kiran, Sanjeev, Christine, Bruce, Rajeev, Nihanth

I assumed the role of Chairman/CEO, Sanjeev, director of technology, Rajeev Aasoori, managing director, and subsequently Nihanth Kandimalla, director of IT/web services, and Kiran Kumar, director of online marketing. Christine Abraham has since worked her way through the ranks, contributing to ideation in technology, market research, defining and implementing social media strategies, and now serving as social media manager.

In a previous article, I wrote about how startups have to Get Stuff Done, and in that vein, we adhere to a strategy that combines immediate workflow completion with ongoing protocol development. Because in today's competitive marketplace, a company is only truly a company when it can continue to operate efficiently in the absence of its founder(s).

To that end, in the article I wrote entitled Growing Beyond The Glass Ceiling -- published in the July issue of Small Business Enterprise --, I suggested that to grow beyond a solo-preneurship, an owner may in fact have to reconfigure their entire company structure; management, protocols, collaborations, and systems -- especially in this new automated world we live in.

And Incognito Worldwide has painstakingly been doing that: developing and refining our protocol processes, building out our enterprise system for full project progress visibility for our collaborative partners and clients; integrating our help desk; building out our website as a hub of activity and information; and consolidating many online tools to deliver the highest quality delivery of services and reporting.

The Incognito Worldwide team is young, yet smart, innovative, and motivated. I’ve watched them grow, professionally and personally. And with every success and setback, they continue to learn and rise to be better than they were before. Whether it’s learning how to work with and develop new technologies and/or frameworks, quickly adapt to ever-changing online search algorithms, or social media strategies, I grow more confident each day that, having been named Startup Of The Month, we’re destined for many more accolades in the future.