Q: How did ServiceDott get started and how did you team up with your Cofounders? Describe briefly ServiceDott’s journey todate. Suresh: ServiceDott was born out of a need in the marketplace to make the recruitment process efficient by talking the strain out of it. Finding, hiring and managing candidates can be extremely challenging for Recruitment agencies and Corporates alike. Many of the processes associated with recruitment like job posting, candidate search, scheduling and workflow management is run manually most of the time. Armed with the experience of running job boards (JobsDB) and technology companies for many years – Bala, Daniel and Suresh envisioned ServiceDott, more than 5 years ago – A company that would build automation software to fulfill these requirements. Our flagship product DM Recruit is now in its 5th edition and comprehensive enough to tackle both the mundane as well as intricate tasks associated with the recruitment process. Whether it is a recruitment consultant in an agency or an HR recruiter in a corporate, DM Recruit provides the necessary flexibility and fire power to automate recruitment operations. Started with a vision to provide recruitment solutions to businesses of “Any size”, ServiceDott now has a clientele of more than 180 organizations and 5,000 recruiters that make use of DM Recruit to ease their daily operations. Q: What are ServiceDott’s core value propositions in the recruiting domain? What are ServiceDott’s competitive differentiators today? Suresh: Our Aim is simple - to help companies reduce their Cost and Time to Hire through automation and increased efficiency. Improved efficiency leads to increased productivity and better output. For example: Hiring requests come from Clients or Line managers and HR recruiters then go and source for candidates – Our system automates this process through efficient workflow; Hiring managers can raise requests which can be viewed online by Recruiters who then post Ads on the Company web pages and external agencies; Incoming candidate applications are automatically stored in our Database allowing for dynamic search and from there on to short listing, interview scheduling, feedback and hiring. We thus take away process inefficiencies and let Corporates focus on their Business. Q: What are ServiceDott’s prime target customer segments? Suresh: Our software caters well to both Recruitment agencies and HR Departments of Corporates. From multi-billion dollar corporations, to SMEs to Agencies, we have a broad spectrum of clientele. A lot of focus recently has been on the following industries: - Media and Communications - Food & Beverage - Construction - Hi-Tech Q: What are key milestones in ServiceDott’s that you find most fulfilling? Suresh: The software was initially built for Agencies. But a chance meeting with Singapore Wild Life parks in 2011 gave us the impetus to build extensions to cater to the Corporate sector. In the next couple of years, we added several multi-nationals and ASEAN conglomerates to our portfolio. Our next significant milestone was moving to the Cloud in 2014. Lastly, our continuous ability to take specific customer requests and turn them into general functionality within the product has made our software extremely versatile and robust. Q: What do you envision as strategic next steps for ServiceDott in terms of its growth? Suresh: We have established a good reputation and market share in the South East Asia region. We now plan to scale our operations in the US and European markets. In terms of our product, we are building DM Recruit for mass recruitment – a new domain where we will provide functionality for mass hiring of blue collared workers via mobile devices. Also in the works is building of an automated platform for email resume processing. Q: How did ServiceDott prepare you for your other entrepreneurial venture besides RecruitDott? Suresh: ServiceDott has been a great experience. Dealing with the most important asset of any organization – Talent, has been a rewarding and enlightening experience. Our close association with Employers and Recruitment agencies has taught us the nuances involved with the entire recruitment workflow. At the same time, understanding jobseeker needs and psyche has been an equally important area. The combination will enable us to build that ‘Intelligent Recruitment Platform’ which would be coveted by every recruiter. Q: What key real life lessons would you share with other entrepreneurs? Suresh: The entrepreneurial journey is all about belief, dedication and lots & lots of hard work. You have to be absolutely convinced about what you embark upon and then pursue it with relentless passion. Failure is the first step to learning and at no time do you learn this more than when you are an entrepreneur. Because only success has many fathers; failure has none. Also because you are your own brand, you have to put in the hard yards to sell what you have built. Nobody else is going to do it for you. But the pat on the back you get from a satisfied customer, is Priceless!