Success Story of a
Tenderbolt
Sanmit
Shah is from from Telhara, a Taluka in Akola District, Maharashtra. 26 years
old Sanmit grew up in a humble family where education was held very highly and
there were high hopes from him. His father is an Agriculturist while his mother
is a homemaker. “I completed my S.S.C & H.S.C but was a pretty average
student,” he says. His father wanted Sanmit to become a doctor but he wasn’t
good with academics and scoring ‘marks’.
Sanmit
was creative and loved science, which led him to participate in NCSTC
competition till National Level and he received the ‘Child Scientist’ award
from GOI. But performance in school remained average and he couldn’t get
through to MBBS, his father’s dream. “It was good in a way. We had to settle
for Computer Engineering in St. Francis institute of Technology, Mumbai.
This
is when he got his first laptop and was introduced to massive, exciting
internet. “I was amazed at how information is available free of cost and how
business can be built using it!” says Sanmit. Through his college, he got a job
at Mphasis which he did for three months. Not really interested in coding from
a cubicle, Sanmit was thinking of ways in which a business can be built using
technology. To gain more knowledge, he joined Edelweiss Broking Ltd. as an
Equity Sales Executive. “I performed well in Edelweiss and later after three
months joined Tendernews.com because of the concept they were working on,” says
Sanmit.
After
three quick stints, Sanmit took some time out and decided to start up on his
own. This is how TenderBolt came
into existence in October 2012. His previous employer was certainly an influence
with what he currently does. Registered as Ibay
Solutions Pvt. Ltd., TenderBolt is a portal dealing in Global Procurement
Information Business. They collect and consolidate Tenders, Projects,
Procurement News, Contract Awards, RFQs, RFPs, from more than 10,000+ different
sources, more than 150+ countries and provide this information to their clients
(Global MNCs) through host of Online services like website access & Email
Alerts within 24 hours.
Business Model:
TenderBolt has an algorithm which goes through hundreds
of sites and gathers information about tenders and contract awards. This
information is then brought together into one consumable report. In the initial
days, Sanmit floated around a few samples of the kind of reports they were
offering and the clients found value in them. He moved his business to
Mumbai where he manages a team of 7 at the moment.
TenderBolt
works on an annual subscription model and takes advance from clients to
subscribe to their services. Talking of the traction, Sanmit says, “Well, we
launched our website in May 2013. It was difficult to grow in such competitive
market but still we manage to do business of more than EURO 20,000 in the first
12 months.” Their ideal target market includes all global MNCs interested in
tendering, but their focus is on Europe, Middle East & South East Asian
companies. Sanmit started out with midsized European companies which were
familiar with such services and then expanded.
