| WORCESTER, Mass. - Look back far enough in any company's history and you will find a single person trying to solve a problem or make one aspect of life easier.
eSuele, an Internet greeting-card company founded by Clark University student Harsha Raghavan is no different.
"I forget all of my friend's birthdays and it's quite embarrassing, so I wanted to develop software that would help me remember all those important dates," says Raghavan, who is pursuing his master's degree in business administration.
"I also was having trouble sending multiple greeting cards during occasions like New Year's and Diwali, and I wanted an easy and quick solution. I took that simple idea one step further and developed an application which automatically selects and sends an appropriate card on the occasion."
The idea first came to Raghavan during 2001 in Chennai, India, his birthplace. At the time, he was a product manager for a market intelligence vendor for Texas Instruments.
With all the money he saved while working at that position, and with economic help from his father, Srinivasa Raghavan, he launched the company with $1,000.
"I developed the eSuele application with a software engineer, a graphics designer to write the e-Tour application within the program, and a freelance greeting-card artist who worked on a revenue sharing agreement," Raghavan says. "The company was definitely developed on a super-low budget."
But from simple beginnings come good things. Through the fee-based service, which costs $5 a year, users store various names in the software's address book.
Once all the dates of birthdays and anniversaries are entered in, the software sends customized e-cards for each occasion.
This is accomplished in conjunction with an online server. So far, about 650 users from the United States, Australia and India have signed on.
"I feel that this software is really great news for individuals and businesses because they can now start sending cards to colleagues, employees, customers and vendors at an extremely low rate," Raghavan says.
The company's present structure is simple. Raghavan uses a single developer and works in close coordination with him. He credits his father as not only a financial booster, but as a strategic business adviser as well.
Raghavan says he has learned a lot through his work at the company.
"eSuele has helped develop in me empathy and an appreciation for the power of people," he says. "I've learned how to really listen. Also, I have grown tremendously in terms of my entrepreneurial instincts and my strategic vision." |
