A first of its kind in India, Softwaresuggest.com is a business software recommendation and discovery platform. It helps businesses select the right software solutions based on their specific recommendations. Founded by Ankit Dudhwewala, 28, an MBA graduate from NMIMS, Mumbai, and Piyush Patel, 25, a Computer Science engineer from Dharmsinh Desai University, Gujarat, Ankit had his eureka moment when his team wanted to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning solution that met with no success. The pain point being that there was no reliable source to find the software options available and check the veracity of a vendor. Ankit says, “We realised then that there is a market for such a product.” Piyush was working as an Android Developer before he decided to join hands with Ankit to start SoftwareSuggest.com on New Year’s day this year.
It took them two months to write code for the product before finally launching it on March 1st. Including the founders, they have nine employees now and have already started raking in the moolah and are expecting to breakeven by the end of this year. They earn revenues by advertisements of software vendors on their website along with a commission on each sale made for the vendor. They have been able to rope in software vendors like Busy, Marg, Greytip, Docengage, Reylon, etc and boast of helping firms like Times Group, V-Mart and Zari Silk among others.
Piyush says, “With Software Suggest, a company can find demo video of the product, request a demo and get quotations too. From accounting to warehouse management, we list software in all business domains.” Software Suggest prepares in-depth comparison reports for software on the market along with reviews and screenshots. If stuck with deciding on a software, the folks at Software Suggest help them with making the decision. They are focusing on planning offline conferences and Server Message Block education initiative on software adaptation. Word of mouth publicity from our existing users is what we mainly depend on,” says Piyush. Providing the best suggestions to match requirements for their clients and connect them with a vendor whose price and service matches their expectations is what makes Software Suggest tick.
Like most startups that aim to be the best in its category, the founders share the dream of making Software Suggest a one stop solution for all the software needs of an Indian business. Ankit says,“I cannot stress enough the importance of selling. After creating the product, we got our hands dirty and polished our convincing skills to bring in the early adopters of our product”.
We can all see that it has become a success.
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