Pravin Bolar
Founder & CEO
What if there was an Amazon.com for business technologies? A platform wherein enterprises can just log in and scroll through the highly curated list of technology products, IT services & solutions from thousands of vendors and decide on their technology partner based on their requirements, the reviews, case studies, and much more. vBridge Hub is a virtual collaboration platform that connects Tech Vendors, Service Providers and Enterprises to accelerate the Technology and Innovation adoption process. The company endeavors to drive hyper-collaboration between all stakeholders of the business ecosystem, allowing them to Search, Find, Connect, Engage, and Collaborate continuously. CIO Insider engages in an exclusive interaction with vBridge Hub’s founders – Pravin Bolar and Krishna VHS, who strongly believe that continuous innovation through continuous collaboration is critical for businesses to stay relevant.
In conversation with Pravin Bolar, Founder & CEO, and Krishna VHS, Co-Founder & Head - Sales & Strategy
Staying abreast of the dynamic technology trends is a dire need now more than ever before for organizations across the world and all industry verticals. As a startup, where is vBridge Hub positioned as a hub for technology?
vBridge Hub is a collaboration platform for the tech ecosystem with an objective to accelerate technology adoption. It can be considered as a hub of knowledge focused on emerging technology products and solutions allowing members of the ecosystem to research, learn, contribute and collaborate with each other for business purposes. The members of this tech eco-system comprise of Enterprises, Tech Product Vendors, Service Providers, Academia, Research Institutes, Analysts, Advisors, Accelerators, Incubators and Independent Consultants.
From a business standpoint, Enterprises can benefit from finding and engaging
rapidly with relevant technology ecosystems. Technology vendors benefit from engaging in real business opportunities and increasing market awareness with a targeted audience on the platform, while the Service Providers benefit from improving the collaboration with the tech ecosystem to drive co-innovation or find solutions to meet their ever evolving customer demands.
We currently have over 7,000 vendors and 15,000 products on our platform, which will scale to over 100,000 in the next 12 months to provide a rich set of solution options for our member communities.
What are the challenges that you are trying to address through vBridge Hub?
The fundamental challenge that we are trying to solve is the dire need for accelerating technology adoption. Today, it takes anywhere between 9-to-12 months minimum for enterprise organizations to adopt a new technology – from the time they have a business requirement to the time they have successfully piloted the technology. In this dynamic technology landscape which is evolving at a rapid pace, these business requirements or even the technology itself could potentially become irrelevant in such a long time frame. Our objective is to help organizations reduce this time frame by at least 50 percent, thus allowing them to realize the benefits of a particular technology requirement much faster.
We envision contributing at least $3 billion revenue enhancement to the ecosystem over the next five-to-seven years
What is the kind of experience that your platform provides to its users?
Our platform enables collaboration for its users on two planes – user
collaboration and business collaboration. Any technology professional can register on our platform and derive value from user collaboration. They can post a question, post an article, post a product review, receive updates on technology products and solutions in their areas of interest and much more.
When it comes to business collaboration, the demand-side business users can leverage the platform to research, and find & collaborate with technology partners who match their specific business needs using highly curated information such as use cases, case studies, testimonials and many more attributes. Similarly, the supply-side business users can engage in business opportunities and increase their brand and product awareness among various communities.
Our AI & ML enabled search engine allows users to find relevant technology solutions in addition to making recommendations based on individual user’s areas of interest.
What’s your work culture? Is your team working from home during the pandemic?
We have an extremely open work culture. Everyone in the team has the ability and freedom to not only come up with ideas, but also question what we are doing. We don’t have much of a hierarchy, which also enables an open culture. And yes, our team is working from home for the past six months.
What are your future plans? What do you have in the pipeline?
We have launched our platform earlier this year and have successfully onboarded a select set of Tech Vendors, Global Service Providers and Enterprises as part of our pilot program. Our focus for the next 6 to 12 months is to scale the demand side of our platform with Enterprises and Global Service Providers in the US and India markets.
In parallel, we will scale the supply side from the current set of 7,000 Tech Vendors across 45 technology categories to over 100,000 Tech Vendors across 500+ categories. As we scale the supply and demand side business on the platform, we plan to also introduce other communities such as Investors, Independent Consultants, Universities, Accelerators, and Incubators with an intent to enable a Market Network that allows businesses to create and find value in each other to drive their respective business growth. We envision contributing at least $3 billion revenue enhancement to the ecosystem over the next five-to-seven years.