We at Kovai.co inaugurated a new extension of our office space in Coimbatore on December 1, 2022. It is a 60-seater space located a few floors below our existing 275-seater space in Hanudev Infopark. Though the global economy is staring at difficult times ahead, we always have remained focused on our long-term vision and set the ball rolling for future growth in employee strength and revenues.
The 4500 sq-ft space designed in eclectic shades of green and white, by Quadra Architects, Chennai was inaugurated by the CEO of Kissflow, Suresh Sambandam. Suresh, besides founding Kissflow, is also the co-founder of SaaSBoomi, the pay-it-forward community of SaaS founders in the country. Suresh was the perfect person for the occasion because he has not only been a mentor and good friend to our founder, Saravana Kumar, for years but has been a driving force to the SaaS community across Tamil Nadu. Our founder, Saravana, and chief operating officer, Andrew Cloke, who works out of our office in London, UK, were also present during the occasion.
Speaking to the team after the ribbon cutting, Saravana, explained why we decided to expand our office space while many tech companies across the world are letting people go. “Many people questioned the necessity to expand our office space at this point because we currently have 240 people and our existing office space can accommodate 270 people,” he said. He also reminded us of Bill Gates’ famous quote “People always overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years”.
Saravana reminded us that Kovai.co has always had a long-term perspective. “Markets may have ups and downs, but we don’t worry about intermittent conditions. I believe that we will reach an employee strength of 325 very soon,”. “This is again just another step in my dream of creating a SaaS ecosystem in the district and putting Coimbatore on the global SaaS map”. Saravana also thanked the administration and operations team who managed to get the office ready without requiring him to get involved at all.
Introducing us to Suresh, Saravana said the founder of Kissflow is extremely passionate about the Dream TN initiative, which aims for the state to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2030. He also spoke about how Suresh’s and his backgrounds were quite similar coming from a rural background to running a bootstrapped company, growing it step by step.
Suresh Sambandam gave us a brief background on how he got into technology and SaaS, being from Cuddalore, where schools did not yet have computers. “When I first began studying computer science, I did not understand programming at all. After learning some basics, I managed to develop an airline ticket reservation system. I self-learned everything by traveling to Pondy and buying books priced in dollars from Higginbothams,” he recollects.
While talking about how rule-based computing changed his life, Suresh encouraged everyone in the gathering to always have a social aspiration, which can keep changing as we grow in life. He then opened the stage for an “Ask me anything” session.
The lively two-way interaction involved questions across a broad spectrum of topics including ideal leadership characteristics, risks involved in Entrepreneurship, Dravidian ideology, Periyarism, Temples, future, and scope of SaaS among others.
The event ended with the cutting of a cake that was designed around the Kovai.co logo and sumptuous lunch.
