How Startup Xperts helps startups to excel in business

23 Dec 2015

Every startup begins their journey with an ambition of hi-growth but all startups cannot penetrate into target markets and they face issues like flat sales, negative or slow growth, dipping revenue, unable to differentiate and win customers, etc. Those hi-growth aspirant entrepreneurs may have limited resources but still they wish to build a successful enterprise in a short period of time. Startup Xperts works on all these areas ensuring that all the units are aligned and work together, to ensure profitable growth. Even hiring a full-time CMO could be unaffordable for most startups; soStartup Xperts act as virtual CMO, CxO for other startups, and will be responsible for expanding their business opportunities and revenue potential. “ Having the right strategy, driven by right people, and executing at the right time, with all units like strategy, marketing, sales, and operations in great alignment, only can create bigger, positive impact.” feels Startup Xperts , an expert in building businesses.

Startup Xperts’ founder Mr Shyam Sekar S returned back to India from US in 2012, to pursue his passion of building entrepreneurs in India. He formed Startup Xperts in 2013 and in 2014 Startup Xperts took a step further to be Startup Xperts Business Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Headquartered in Chennai and having presence in Bangalore, his business growth consulting firm Startup Xperts helps startups as well as SMEs to step up, and accelerate their revenue growth. As a business builder, Startup Xperts has expanded right from business advisory to full-scale execution of strategies including marketing and sales functions. It has set up Digital marketing team to spearhead businesses, providing clients with major ammunition that helps them to differentiate, win deals (even with premium pricing). The company also act as advisor, leadership coach with $billion multinational companies of the US as well as India. Recently they have also set up ‘Board of Entrepreneurs’ a startup bootcamp / workshop for budding entrepreneurs, founders, in providing them a hands-on approach to build their business. The company generates it revenue through flexible revenue generation models that include Retainer fee, success fee, Services fee for smart digital marketing (for B2B and B2C both) and Project fee for coaching, mentoring for ground breaking innovation, and execution.

The Maverick behind the Success of Startup Xperts

Mr Shyam Sekar S is the founder, Chief Mentor and Strategist of the company. Driven by passion to build entrepreneurial ecosystem, Mr Shyam Sekar S founded Startup Xperts , who brings over 22 years of experience in working with many corporate, multinationals, startups and about 15 yrs of expertise in international business. He has spearheaded global marketing and sales initiatives building many successful enterprises. Having lived sometime in the US, finally he returned back in 2012 to pursue his passion of building entrepreneurs in India. He also co founded Bangalore based Febler, a startup that is seen as Twitter of audio.

Shyam has BE (NIT, REC), MBA, and has also successfully completed Executive Management Program from Harvard Business School, Boston, USA. He has traveled to about 25 countries on business, and expanded opportunities across geographies.

Shyam Sekar, has been a part of other various national level startup initiatives. He is a mentor with Startup Weekend, Chennai (a Seattle based global initiative) and Advisor, Mentor of SMB Connect initiative, New Delhi. Apart from mentoring IIT-Kharagpur’s entrepreneurship initiatives Empressario, he is a member of South Chapter and Mentor with BYST, CII; he also contributes column and articles in business magazines. He has been a part of various events, conferences, on Digital marketing, SMB connect, Startup Grind, educational institutions, and a key speaker for NASSCOM Product forums/ events.

We understand that no one-size-fits-all approach works. So smart, effective, winning strategies are implemented to step up your revenue growth. What worked well 3 or 5 years back, may not work today. It is all about picking the right strategies, doing right things, and pursue with finesse, to reach your set objectives.” Startup Xperts said.

“ It is all about execution and Startup Xperts walks with you that extra mile in not just devising these strategies, but also executes those plans, tasks, along with you; review and monitor, to ensure that goals are achieved.” they added.

With the passion to build 100 successful enterprises by 2020, the company would also like to expand their association with at least another 1000 aspiring entrepreneurs, through coaching, mentoring, startup bootcamp/workshop models and through BoE (Board of Entrepreneurs) initiative. Their other plans include creating ‘intrapreneurs’ within large enterprises to further fuel our ecosystem and being involved in various social entrepreneurship initiatives to make millions of life better. Startup Xperts aspires to work with funders (seed, angel investors or VC) in building their investee companies, and also to help them invest in right ideas/entities that have a well thought through business model. It also plans to work with Government, where necessary, to facilitate creation of entrepreneurship ecosystem that can provide additional support to further fuel Indian economy. For the betterment of startups and to enable them to expand business opportunities, Startup Xperts intends to join hand with VCs.

“This article has Published in “The CEO magazine”

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

Startup Xperts invited for keynote session by NASSCOM Product Forum, Calicut

5 Dec 2015

NASSCOM Product Forum invited Startup Xperts to deliver a single speaker session at Calicut on 30-Nov 2015. This is part of NASSCOM’s initiative to address various emerging and small, medium enterprises and bring them under their Product Forum platform across India. Their Kerala chapter had been keen to get a session delivered at Calicut.

The topic was on ‘Winning strategies to expand your enterprise’. This session was aimed at every entrepreneur, CxOs, and the objective was to provide ideas in revitalizing their thought process, gain insights on smart techniques to winning strategies that could help accelerate their revenue, growth and profitability.

This was organized at the Cyberpark, Calicut. The venue was state of the art IT park in Calicut and CyberPark is a landmark by itself. The CEO of CyberPark, Mr Ajith Kumar Pillai introduced Shyam Sekar S, Chief Mentor and Chief Growth Officer at Startup Xperts Business Consulting Pvt. Ltd. to the forum. Mr Ajith, during the introductory speech mentioned about the facilities of CyberPark at Calicut and highlighted the importance of building the skill, and necessary technologies to spearhead Kerala’s growth in the IT sector. Calicut has a number of small, medium businesses, and so presents opportunities for growth.

NASSCOM was represented by Mr Sujith Unni who had taken pains in organizing this event in association with CyberPark, Calicut, Cafit, and Kerala Startup Mission.

Mr Shyam Sekar delivered a near 2-hour session addressing various entrepreneurs, CxOs, marketing and sales heads of emerging enterprises. He quoted, “Ideas can be dime and dozen, but how many of these ideas turn successful? It’s all about execution. This means that your business needs to break the shackle and get to faster growth phase through various ingredients like, effective leadership, building a core team, business strategies in alignment with the market, smart marketing, smart sales, and on-boarding startup/growth advisors”.

The event was well attended, and interestingly this has been in a planning phase over last few months and finally able to roll out successfully by end of November. Mr Shyam thanked Mr Ajith Pillai and Mr Sujith for having invited him, and also in organizing this event in a very professional way. Startup Xperts is glad to be part of this NASSCOM’s initiative in building our startup ecosystem.

Other coverage on the above event:

  1. Kerala IT News – http://keralaitnews.com/5506/cyberpark-kozhikode-hosts-nasscom-product-forum-for-startups
  2. News Experts – http://newsexperts.in/2015/12/01/cyberpark-hosts-nasscom-product-forum-for-startups/

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

Startup Xperts invited at IIM, Kozhikode

30 Nov 2015: Mr Shyam Sekar, Founder and Chief Mentor at Startup Xperts Business Consulting Pvt. Ltd., met with the Professors, Dean, and students of E-cell (Entrepreneurship Cell) at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. The meet happened on the 30-Nov at IIM, Kozhikode premises. As part of Startup Xperts’ mission to build startups, entrepreneurship ecosystem in India, various points were discussed to see how IIM can support young, dynamic, aspiring student entrepreneurs, to follow their passion of building their ideas and startups.

7 ways to build your small business as successful brand | Startup Xperts

How to make your company, a brand?

by Shyam Sekar S

From about a century ago where we called it the ‘age of manufacturing’, to a decade back we termed it as the age of information, today we are at the ‘age of the customer’.

In some of my conferences, as a speaker, I have highlighted this – many entrepreneurs feel that branding is only for large companies; branding is a big budget exercise; branding involves huge time and effort and we cannot afford both.

But ‘why branding’ has become a no-brainer today. Why? Branding is essential to position you and your company in the right space/right perspective; branding helps to win clients; branding helps to beat your competition; and simply put, if you aren’t creating a ‘brand’ you are losing opportunities.

Well, most consider branding as ‘marketing activities’ that big brands pursue today – be it Coca Cola, Merc, Amazon, Flipkart, Nestle, to just name a few. But the key point that I would like to suggest you is that you don’t do what they are doing today. Do what they did when they were a startup like you; replicate or improvise what they did when they were a small business like yours.

With this important take, let’s move swiftly to how and where we can start. Branding can be done in a traditional and/or digital way. Today, in a connected world, branding can be done at a far higher pace and reach, and can shake established/traditional enterprises. Look at Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Google, or Uber, or Flipkart. All these brands moved into the billion dollar club in quick time. Unlike traditional industries that took decades to reach that mark. So leverage the power of digital to build your brand.

Branding is a continuous journey. It doesn’t happen by one activity, or one action, or one time. You have to build your company, your brand, through all of the available resources, both internal and external.

It all starts with a focus – focus on customer and customer’s need. All your actions, your mission, need to be centered on this. I understand that when Amazon tries to launch a product, or enhancement, the managers need to come up with a convincing answer to a basic question – how does this benefit or positively impact our customers? If not convincing, the idea gets dropped.

Get to work with a smart digital marketing company/consultant, if you do not have a specialist in your firm. Getting to identify them is tough, but worth your pain, as we are talking long term here.

• Build a robust digital marketing strategy.

• Balance your inbound and outbound strategies, depending on how and what your business is (B2B or B2C or both).

• Use analytics to power your business decisions.

• Email marketing can be used effectively (note, I am not referring to sales mailers here) to build reputation, position yourself as a thought leader, and more importantly helps to build ‘trust’ (an essential ingredient to build your company, your brand).

• SEO, SEM, SMM to be executed in perfect sync, as you do not want to throw your money, your precious resource, in a bottomless pit.

• Brand awareness leads to engagement; engagement leads to trust; trust helps you win customers and grow your businesses.

• Finally, build the right DNA across all stakeholders – your employees, customers, vendors, partners, investors, etc. Build your brand brick by brick through all of these stakeholders; understand that this is a long drawn, continuous and consistent, effort. Your aspiration and passion has to be communicated to all stakeholders and there can be no deviation between what you believe and what you do.

Happy branding!

Happy branding!

About the author:

Shyam Sekar S, is the Founder, Chief Mentor and Strategist at Startup Xperts Business Consulting Pvt. Ltd. , a business growth consulting firm. Shyam is a serial entrepreneur and helps many entrepreneurs in building up their enterprises, thereby building our entrepreneurship ecosystem. He passionately involves by giving shape to an idea and idea to execution; helps build startup and small medium enterprises by accelerating their revenue growth. Supports them through developing and most importantly, implementing smart business strategies, digital marketing, smart sales, brand building, mentoring, coaching, and leadership development. He can be reached at shyam@startupxperts.com

or his mobile +91 99401 36667.

Startup Xperts is a management consulting firm with an objective to transform companies into the next level of growth. Our mission is to help companies to steeply accelerate their growth. Be it family run business, small or medium enterprise or a boutique firm, Startup Xperts have all the right answers to step up their growth. Startup Xperts help clients in a range of service areas including business consulting, strategic consulting, sales and marketing consulting, digital marketing, HR, Operations and leadership training.

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

The views expressed in this article are that of the author’s and Startup Xperts is not responsible for this content. In case of any objection in content, IP violation, incorrect or inappropriate information, please inform us at ceo@startupxperts.com. We will do our best to act on it at the earliest.

Leadership session for CII BYST regional heads

12 June 2015

CII-BYST organized a training on ‘Leadership’ for their cluster heads and above, on 12-June 2015. This training was organized through an online mode and participants from various locations could participate through internet.

CII-BYST had requested Shyam Sekar S, Chief mentor and Founder at Startup Xperts Business Consulting Pvt. Ltd. to provide this leadership training for their senior executives and managers. The participants were Cluster heads and above and been part of CII for a long time now. Shyam quoted, “The crowd was full of energy and eager to pick up interesting insights as they wanted to hone their leadership skills better. It is all about behavioural changes that needs to be addressed first, before taking them through some of the key elements that need to focus on, in order to be a better leader than what they are today. Thanks to BYST team to have organized this initiative to take this initiative to a higher level”.

The participants were from across the country right from Chennai, Assam, Odisha and other locations.

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com