I always wanted to tell the story of Geedesk but kept postponing it. To write it I will have to dive deep into my memories.

My life has not been easy (I have no qualms about it) so I normally avoid stirring up old memories as it gives me mixed emotions. 

This year as Geedesk enters its eighth year of existence I decided to share our story of building Geedesk with the world. 

It was the year 2016 and I decided to build an asset management and ticketing software for system administrators. I had worked with system administrators for a couple of years and felt that they needed what I was building. I named it Adjutas. 

However, the market taught me an important lesson. NEVER SOLVE A PROBLEM, THAT DOES NOT EXIST. Adjutas was solving a problem that did not exist. To make matters worse, open-source alternatives also flooded the market.  

Pivoting to Geedesk

(In photo: Working on Geedesk from Cafe Coffee Day on a Saturday)

While struggling to sell Adjutas we came across a random requirement of building a web application for a hotel to solve a specific business problem. 

We were excited as this would bring in some much-needed cash into our bank account but were equally scared as we did not want to pivot into an unknown territory.

It was so stressful as on the one hand we wanted to earn some money and on another hand did not want to run behind a possible outlier. 

We decided to do some market validation to see whether this new requirement was an outlier or a sure-shot advantage.

Market Validation

(In photo: Mani making some cold calls to validate the idea)

We googled and found hotels similar to the one that wanted us to build the application and started approaching them with this new product idea. 

We did not have any product at that moment but prepared mock screens with some HTML and CSS and started giving product demos. No backend code, nothing just a few static HTML pages made to look good with CSS.

To our surprise, in a short period, we were able to obtain 10 hotels that were interested in signing up for a 30-day free trial. 

This was a clear indication that the hospitality industry needed our product. We appointed ourselves as the people who would do it. 

Breakthrough

(In photo: Celeberating Geedesk’s first cheque)

We built the first version of the Geedesk in a week. To save time we cannibalized some old software applications lying hopelessly on my computer. 

Once the product was ready my colleague Manikandan started calling up hotels who had agreed to sign up for a trial and we started the trial. 

In 20 to 25 days we had done market validation, built a product, and acquired initial customers. That was the level of desperation to earn some money. 

The first version of the product had less than 10% of the features that Geedesk has today. Yet we competed with some established players. When your back is shoved against the wall even the weakest person can fight back. 

Initial funding

(In photo: Working on Geedesk from Cafe Coffee Day on a Saturday)

After we got the first three to four customers I was super confident that we finally had a product that could make us some money.

But by this time, my savings had all run out and we needed more money to ensure we paid salaries and also kept the servers running. 

I wanted to bootstrap Geedesk so we did not want to raise any capital. I wanted complete freedom and oversight on Geedesk so that I could steer the company in the direction that I wanted and I felt this was important in the initial days. 

My wife came to our rescue by giving me the gold chain that her mother gave her which I sold and raised Rs. 2,25,000/-. This was the initial funding that helped us kickstart Geedesk. 

To save money we also pulled the plug on Adjutas and ensured that we spent money only on Geedesk. 

It was not easy 

(In photo: Went to the beach to eat ice cream with the capital raised)

Building a company is never easy. It requires a lot of grit, determination, and perseverance. Geedesk is no different. We have seen our fair share of difficulties failures and challenges. 

None of the early team members were from the hospitality industry. We had no idea how a hotel functioned. To counter this we did all the deployments in person. 

Some hotels paid us for travel and accommodation some did not and some partially paid. So in those instances, we would spend money like gold. If it was possible to walk we would walk, if it was possible to skip a meal we would skip a meal.

We spent money on the bare minimum. The ultimate goal was to make Geedesk work and turn it into a company. 

On to better things

Today Geedesk is in a comparatively better place. We are a bigger team now and are consistently growing. We have a long road ahead of us but the future looks promising, beautiful, and hopeful. Above all we have Geedesk to help us make more money.