By : shabda

Today we talk to Pallav Nadhani, founder of FusionCharts, a company building interactive flash charts and data visualization tools. He is also founder of Seeders, an angel investment firm.

Shabda: Would you tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get started? How has the journey so far been?

Pallav: I am a techie turned CEO. I started FusionCharts at the age of 17 in 2002. Before that, for 2 years, I worked as web developer in my dad's web design/development firm. That's where I developed a love for web technologies. Before that I was writing basic programs in BASIC/C/C++ for school projects. During that stint at my dad's firm, I wrote a lot of technical articles for various online journals and also wrote a book called Flash.NET, which delved on combination of Flash and ASP.NET, published by Friends of Ed publications. The idea of creating charts in Flash was originally put as an article on ASPToday.com, which got very good feedback and I later made a product out of it. The article was written to earn pocket money, and that $1,500 eventually became the seed capital for this company. The journey so far has been enlightening - not having worked ever before, it's been a roller coaster ride. Lots of experimentation, lots of mistake, few things right, but loads of learning - every single day.

Shabda: You currently have a executive position at two companies, Fusioncharts and Seeders. How difficult is switching between these two positions. How much of your current time divided between these two companies?

Pallav: FusionCharts is my primary business where I dedicate bulk of my time. Seeders is my angel investment firm (along with a partner) which we typically look into on Fridays and Saturdays (owing to lesser number of companies that we're currently dealing with).

Shabda: You started at the age of 17, what have been the advantages/disadvantages of being an entrepreneur from such an early age?

Pallav:

Advantages:

- You do not have *anything* to lose if you start early. If nothing works, you become a way more learned man and get a better job :)

- Since you do not have any idea about an existing job or product/service, you start from a blank slate and do not define any boundaries. As such, you always strive to make it better.

- Everybody in the industry loves young people doing things, and they become very helpful to you. I've got helpful advice from so many people that I meet.

- Even if you make a mistake, people forgive you easily thinking you're a kid!

Disadvantages:

- People skills sometimes remain underdeveloped

- You do not know anything about HR and at times make stupid decisions

- Sometimes business gets driven by emotions, rather than professional approach

Shabda: Who has seeders funded?

We're in final stage (legal) with 3 companies. Can disclose thereafter.

Shabda: FusionCharts is not in a particularly "sexy" or hot business, (license software components). How does that help or hurt, for example with staffing or others.

Pallav: It is in the business of generating "Sexy" charts :) It's not what business you necessarily are in, it's how you define the outlook and how successful you're able to pitch it. Some of the most exciting companies around also do the same stuff - but differently (think Zappos!)

Shabda: You have a free version of FusionCharts. How did that help or hurt business? How do you handle competition from the open-sourced version of FusionCharts?

Pallav: FusionCharts Free was created out a situation. We were open source from day 1. Once FusionCharts started gaining popularity, a company in Eastern Europe took our code, modified a bit, decreased prices by a small margin and started selling the same thing. That could have killed us! And owing to lax copyright laws there and high expenses of using legal methods (could have cost us an entire year's revenue), we decided to make the product that they copied absolutely free and open source. This was possible because we were working on a newer version then. So we increased our efforts on the newer version, released it and made the previous version free. This has now become one of our policies. It has tremendously helped us gain trust of users. Also, raises the entry barrier for competition, and also raises the bar for our next version - if we don't make it awesome, the previous free version would cannibalize our own sales - so we have to deliver "awesome" products later!

Shabda: You don't use any technical measures to enforce license. Why is that? What is the piracy/license-non-compliance rate for FusionCharts?

Pallav: Because, we want people to use FusionCharts. Our aim is to deliver better charts and make people happy. And either ways, we do it. Plus, we believe that if you're really happy with our products and can afford to pay for it - you'll eventually come and pay for it someday. Till then, be our guest :)

We do not have any measures/stats on piracy rate.

Shabda: I noticed that Seeders, Infosoft Global and FusionCharts are setup as LLP, instead of more traditional Private Limited Company. Are there any particular advantages for this for startups?

Pallav: We've InfoSoft Global (P) Ltd as the group company. Other subsidiaries are LLP. Even Seeders is Seeders Venture Capital (P) Ltd.

Shabda: You are based in Kolkata. I read Abhishek's views on this. What advantages and disadvtangates being in Kolkata offers? How hard is technical finding people there? (I believe you are setting up a Office in Bangalore soon?)

Pallav: Every city has its own advantages and disadvantages. In Kolkata, teams are more like family, culturally. Cost of living and cost of hiring is slightly lesser. But on the other hand, finding good people is tough. It took me 5 years to build a team of 50 people. All personally handpicked and groomed. For most, it's the first job out of college.

Shabda: You have always been a very focussed company, focusing on your niche of beautiful Flash charting. Are you looking on new areas for FusionCharts to venture into? How important is focus for startups?

Pallav: That's because we just know one thing - data visualization. Nothing more, nothing less. Focus is important - but it's also subjective. If one of your product line is not doing good, you have to look at alternative solutions.

Shabda: What are some important web based and non web based tools you use everyday?

Pallav: Many. Google apps for email, HighRise for CRM (though switching soon, as we've outgrown it), Kayako (for ticketing), Wrike (for project management), Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, PHPBB (our internal discussion forum for team), Evernote,

Non web based: Apple Mail, Safari, Things for Mac, VMWare (for running Windows occasionally inside my OSX), TextMate

Shabda: What are some Indian startups you admire, and why?

Pallav:

Zoho - for its HR strategy and pace of growth

Kayako - Great story that you do not need to be in a big city to build great products

DoAttend - For their focus on usability

InMobi - For their focus on constantly scaling up technology for tomorrow

Slideshare- If you may call it Indian, for revolutionizing an idea

ZipDial - awesome concept!

Shabda: Your accumulated startup gyan in 140 chars or less is …

Pallav: Picked from somewhere: "Don't wait, don't ask, just do it. If you're wrong, someone will tell you. If you're right, they'll love you."

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That were some interesting insights from Pallav. You can follow Pallav on twitter or on Linkedin. You should also read his interview on Mixergy.