Success Story of a Small Town Boy

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.