Vijay Arisetty , Co founder and CEO MyGate chats with Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner Prime Venture Partners .

Vijay is an alumni of National Defense Academy (NDA) and Indian School of Business (ISB) with 15 years of experience. He served as a VP at Goldman Sachs for 4 years with expertise in Change Management, Regulatory Reforms and Sales Support Function for FICC Products. And a fully operational helicopter pilot with Indian Air Force (10 Years). Played pivotal in managing disaster relief operations by Air, Land and Sea, Handling Security of Air Bases, VVIP Flying, Pilot Training and Military Flying Operations

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

1:58 How MyGate started

6:49 Challenges in the first year of launch

11:14 More lessons and advice on product-market fit

12:58 MyGate’s data security and privacy

17:39 Benefits for MyGate users and customers

22:03 Life in armed forces and the Shaurya chakra story

29:28 Tips for entrepreneurs to deal with adversity

Read the complete transcript below:

Sanjay Swamy 1:19

Hi, everybody, welcome to this next episode of the Prime Podcast series. I have with me today, Squadron Leader Vijay Arisetty, the co-founder and CEO of MyGate. Vijay is a highly decorated Air Force Officer and a ‘Shaurya Chakra’ winner. It’s appropriate that we have him this week, which is the week of India’s 73rd Independence Day. Vijay, welcome to the podcast.

Vijay Arisetty 1:48

Thank you, Sanjay. Thank you for having me on this podcast.

Sanjay Swamy 1:51

So let’s start with a few words about MyGate. If you could introduce it in just a short intro for our audience, please.

Vijay Arisetty 1:58

So MyGate is basically a platform where we enable seamless entry and exit of all your visitors at the gate.Today, with the influx of e-commerce and various other services being consumed at the doorsteps, it becomes increasingly difficult for the security guards at the gated communities to manage this traffic, which leads to inconvenience to your visitors, as well as, inconvenience to the residents who are getting these people in. So we have built this platform in a way to make sure that we do not compromise on the security while enhancing the convenience of all the stakeholders around the gate. So this is all about MyGate.

Sanjay Swamy 2:41

Wonderful. I know the company is about four years old, you told me. How many gated communities do you currently serve?

Vijay Arisetty 2:56

MyGate was started in early 2016 and the first MVP or the first product, our first customer, we signed up in the month of October 2016. From then till now we have grown to 10,000 communities across all the top 14 cities of the country and we are guarding close to 2 million homes at this point in time. Pre COVID we used to do close to 3 million visitors validation every day.

Sanjay Swamy 3:24

That’s amazing. Obviously, this week we all tend to remember a lot more. And it’s great to have a service officer in the business of security. But tell me, for our audience being entrepreneurs, how did you get the idea, how did you validate, how did you establish product market fit? What are some experiences you can share?

Vijay Arisetty 3:50

One of the cool things that we had was, we needed to solve a problem that was being faced by users multiple times today. One of the key things when I came out from the Armed Forces was, my wife was concerned about safety and security by being in the armed forces in the cantonment areas, all these things were a default setting and we were never worried about safety and security of ourselves. But once we were in the civil street, my wife’s biggest concern was safety and security. But I decided to stay in a gated community because it’s supposed to be much more secure than in an individual house. But when we moved into the gated community, we realised that our expectations were far from reality.

So that’s the time my house was facing the gate of the community and I used to observe what’s happening at the gate of the community. It was very interesting to see that the traffic at the gate was increasing on a daily basis. But the security guards were following the same old protocol of asking the visitor to write name in the register and then giving a call on the intercom. Sometimes the intercom used to work, sometimes the intercom did not work and finally the security guards would ask the visitor to call from his phone and all these cumbersome protocols used to irritate the visitors who used to come into the gate. At my home the intercom was not serviceable, so every time the visitor used to call from their own phone and hand it over to the security guard.

That’s how I felt that anybody can call and hand it over to the security guard, who is some random person, so that people can come inside. The system was not foolproof, but at the same time a lot more inconvenient to everybody involved in this and that’s the time we thought, that this is a problem that exists, because basically in India almost every household expects three to four visitors whether it is the nanny or the cook or some e-commerce delivery executive or a cab driver or a personal guest. Which means, people are interacting three to four times a day with the security gate. All the interactions are inconvenient and not so pleasant.

And that’s how we said that, okay, how do you make this interaction pleasant? Also, at the same time, increase the security quotient at the gate. So MyGate was formed with the aim of solving those two problems.

Sanjay Swamy 6:32

Got it. Tell us about the first year, which is the most exciting and challenging part of establishing your credibility with the customers, establishing product market fit and knowing that this is where you wanted to spend several years building a large company.

Vijay Arisetty 6:49

Well, I think the first year was very challenging, not because of the product market fit, but more because of the customer education. If you see all the gated communities in India, collectively spend close to $5 billion, to make sure that the gates are secure. People feel that this is a very complex problem and that’s the reason they are spending so much money. When we went through all the problems associated with the gate and built the system in a very simple manner, it was very difficult for people to appreciate that how can such a complex problem be solved with a simple solution, what MyGate had built, it became very difficult for people to absorb that.

So what we did then was, we reached out to our friends and relatives who were staying in gated communities other than our’s. We met the Management Committee members multiple times and we asked them to use the product and said we don’t charge anything till the time you’re satisfied. And we went to a road where there was a cluster of three communities, hosting close to 3000 houses, we said that use the product, don’t give us anything till the time you are satisfied. We deployed the product into space and all of the founders were actually standing at the gate to make sure that the product was successful. Within less than a month’s time, all the 3000 houses adopted MyGate and more interestingly, the gated community started seeing the benefits of being informed of what is happening at the gate real time, whether you are present at home or are not presented at home.

The security guards saw a phenomenal jump in the way they used to operate the system. Initially they were always afraid to maintain the registers and they didn’t have clear transparent ways to access or display the work they’ve done. Today, after all this digitization they’re able to show all the things. So we gave a positive experience to the security guard and as well as the visitors who are transiting through the gate. Once we saw that all the stakeholders were benefiting out of this, that is the time these three communities started paying us.

What interestingly happened in this one month or 30 days when we were deployed in these communities, more and more visitors from surrounding society started coming in for some of the other social engagements with their friends who are staying in these communities. When they experienced the system at the gate, they went back to their own gated communities and said, there is some exciting product in this particular community, why don’t we get that. That’s how other communities started reaching out and the product became a little bit viral in that particular area.

Sanjay Swamy 9:42

Got it. Amazing points. Especially, the point about you and your co founders actually going and serving at the gate and really being true users and customers of the product yourself to experience the thing and many times founders hesitate to do that because it’s a difficult thing to do. What other lessons from those early days would you share for our audiences entrepreneurs who are establishing product market fit?

Vijay Arisetty 10:10

I think for early entrepreneurs, especially for category creating products, there is no existing product anywhere in the world and you are trying to do something on that front. For the product to go beyond the MVP stage or the product market fit stage, it is very important for the founders of the team to play the role of making sure that the product is used by people or experienced by people and then you see whether there is a benefit out of it or not. So, for example, what we did is, by standing at the gate, we made sure that people are using the product, once people use the product, the benefits become very visible, otherwise category creating products, you do any kind of marketing or anything else, it generally what I feel is, it will not work till the time people experience the product because what will you market? There is no basis on which you can do any kind of communication.

Sanjay Swamy 11:11

Got it. Any other insights?

Vijay Arisetty 11:14

And secondly, you have to be very focused on what you do. For category creating products if you try to carpet bomb across multiple areas, it will only suck up your bandwidth and not give the kind of results that you want. If you want to establish your product market fit for a category created product, make sure that you are concentrated over a small area or very high density users and spend all your energies and all your efforts to make sure that this set of users at least 15 to 20% of these users are using your product. If they’re using the product and they’re liking it, that means there is a product market. Then you can figure out what are the ways you need to spread or distribute this product.

But initially, while actively establishing the product market fit, do not try to spend your efforts across multiple geographies and multiple users. Figure out the cohort that you want to experiment with, or try your products with and do a focused exercise to make sure that that cohort is happy and take feedback and then distribute the product.

Sanjay Swamy 12:21

That’s great. So switching gears a little bit, you talked about 3 million transactions a day, you talked about 10,000 communities, two and a half million households that you’re securing with all the entry and exits that are happening. So the obvious question that comes up is, what are you doing with the data and how safe is my data? Since MyGate has access to a lot of my personal and fairly sensitive information, tell us about the strategy with respect to data security and privacy and all the things you’re thinking about and doing.

Vijay Arisetty 12:58

For all three of us, the entire team, understand the sensitivity around the amount of or the kind of data that is being processed by MyGate. It becomes a responsibility to make sure that this data is not exploited or misused by anyone. So once the intent is very clear, and the process and the way we interview people, we figure out how people are sensitive in respect to the data. That is one.

Second is intent alone is not enough, we have to display the qualities of data privacy and data protection. So actually what we did is we invested a lot in the last 18 months to study what all can be done with respect to data security and data privacy, and we figured out that we need to get ourselves ISO 27001 certified so we engaged consultants who can advise us study our infrastructure both physical infrastructure and tech infrastructure and suggest us areas or gaps where we are supposed to fill up. We identified all the places and filled in all the gaps and as of today, we are ISO 27001 certified basically to ensure that the data is safe.

The second thing is data privacy for us to make sure that we are ensuring the highest standards for data privacy. We again had engaged consultants to suggest us have our infrastructure GDPR ready. GDPR today is the gold standard of data privacy and while we have become GDPR ready by doing all the changes suggested, we also studied Justice Srikrishna committee report on Indian data privacy protection and we have encompassed all the suggestions given in that report and we have put adequate framework around MyGate data, so that nobody gets access to this information.

And if so, anybody who’s accessing this information for legitimate reasons as prescribed in the contract, the end users whose data is being investigated, gets to know that their data is being investigated. And if they’re not happy with the reasons given, they can reach out one on one with the person who is accessing that data, so that they can get an adequate answer.

So, this is not only to check our systems and infrastructure to make sure that we protect the data and the data privacy is also ensured, this is more importantly to get the DNA into the company. Having the structures and processes and frameworks and everybody day in and day out working with this kind of framework. It actually gets each and every person responsible, for the kind of data that we are handling and even the thought of accessing this data or doing something about this data not at all exists. So that’s how we have structured the whole company.

Sanjay Swamy 16:07

So the reason I brought this up as a specific point is about MyGate itself. But also, I think most businesses now see themselves as data businesses. I think the effort of implementing these processes and the compliances is quite significant. What you’re saying is, once you get it into the fabric of the company, and it’s non negotiable, then actually the overhead isn’t that much on an ongoing basis. So it’s like a one time thing. Best done on day zero, but even if you do it soon after, as long as you do it early enough, grain it in the culture of the organisation and the product, the feature said at the platform level, then the overhead is very minimal. So what you’re saying is that it’s best done early?

Vijay Arisetty 16:58

Yeah. There were multiple things, as I said, the certifications, the tech architecture, the tech framework, the processes, and the training for the people who are coming into the organisation, there are multiple things that needs to be done to think of the DNA or the fabric of data privacy and security is very non-individual.

Sanjay Swamy 17:20

Great. We’ll just spend a couple more thoughts on what you can share with us about the next phase for MyGate, and then I do want to talk a little bit about your life in the armed forces as well. So tell us a little bit about what’s in store for MyGate users and customers?

Vijay Arisetty 17:39

MyGate in general, what you’re doing is you’re solving the problem at the gate. Pre COVID what we were doing is making sure that the right people are getting access into the community. With COVID, what happened is, there are more checks that are happening at the gate. Earlier people wanted to get the right people in. But right now, they also wanted to get the right and healthy people in. They don’t want to interact with the probability that anybody has even remote chances of having COVID.

So, I think the process at the gate has changed. Now, we had to get adapted to this new process that has come out because of COVID, which is like, transactions used to happen through the gate earlier. Now the transactions are happening at the gate. We have built a lot of systems around, how can we make this process simple at the gate. Including the validation. Also the health checks in a COVID protected strategy. So I think these changes we are adapting to. Second is, on a long term basis for us, we want to make the process at the gate very seamless.

As of today, I think we have just scratched the surface in terms of building a platform and solving the most nuanced use cases in terms of getting people validated and making sure that they’re going out at the right time. But there are multiple other things that we need to do like say for example, how can we make the process of the delivery executive, talk to the systems of the ecommerce company in a way that we get the complete information about who’s the delivery executive coming to deliver something, how can we do a backward integration with an e-commerce company and make sure that the right delivery executive, in fact, who is background verified by the e commerce company is actually coming to do the delivery and not any other person. So that is one thing which we are doing.

Second is, if you see the ecosystem of the security guards, the attrition rate is so high that every three months you see all the security guards changing. Now how do you make the product adaptable to this changing ecosystem of security guards? You need to make it so simple that a complex problem at the gate is solved much more seamlessly by the security. So we’re investing a lot in terms of how to make it so brain dead, that anybody standing at the gate with an experience or any experience would be able to do what is expected out of it. Third, what we’re doing is we’re building more and more intelligent systems in a way that we would be able to reduce the skill level of the security guards to perform the job at the gate.

All the integrations and multiple other things. Every gated community is different and they have got their own set of rules. We are investing a lot in terms of how can communities set up their own rules, how the system can adapt to multiple rules of each and every gated community, they can set their own rules and the security guards or the system is performed as per the rule set by the gated community. So we are going to go much more deeper into what’s happening at the gate and try to make it much more effortless for the security guards in the ecosystem to experience the product.

Sanjay Swamy 21:19

It’s terrific to hear about the sort of obsession you’ll have with solving the problem for that very specific customer and thereby making life easier for everybody in the ecosystem there. So switching gears Vijay, given that this is also the week of India’s 73rd Independence Day, I have the privilege of talking to somebody who guarded the nation. I would love to hear, if you could share with our audience a little bit about how you got into the airforce, what was your life there, what were some of the highlights and specifically about your experience with the tsunami of 2004 and leading up to your ‘Shaurya Chakra’. Do share some experiences.

Vijay Arisetty 22:03

The motivation for me to join the armed forces was the place I was brought up in. My father was working for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and a lot of pilots used to come to the place to interact with the officials. I was fascinated by the way they all used to come in a chopper and go in a chopper, and the uniform, very smartly dressed officers, the Air Force pilots used to get a very royal treatment when they used to come to my place, and I said that if there’s something I need to be when I become big, is that I need to become a pilot so that I can also get this kind of royal treatment.

This actually motivated me to prepare myself for NDA and I was fortunate enough to make it through NDA and had three years in the National Defence Academy, had done my three years of training there and then got into The Airforce. Got trained as a helicopter pilot and then commissioned into the Air Force in 1999 and served in there for close to 10 years, while in the Air Force, I have done some interesting stuff, in the initial days, I was posted in a unit which was primarily focused on disaster relief operations.

Participated in multiple disaster relief operations across Gujarat, flood relief in Orissa, Bihar and multiple such disaster operations and then I got posted to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where it was a strategic airbase, far off from the mainland. And there was a small island called Car Nicobar with four helicopters. Basically, the job was maritime reconnaissance, and we were guarding the borders with respect to seeing that there was nobody coming into our Indian territorial borders.

And while I was there in 2004, the tsunami of December 2004 happened and I quickly ran towards the airfield when this whole thing of the tsunami happened. I knew that every day when I’m going to office, it was an uphill and when I saw the waves coming towards the shore, I just said that let me run towards my office which is an uphill and these waves will not touch it. I started running towards the office, which is the airfield. When I reached the airfield, one of the technicians told me that, “Sir, there is an aircraft ready, do you want to start the aircraft?”. Since it was early morning, five o’clock, I was only in my boxer shorts and a vest. I said that technically, I’m not supposed to fly because I don’t have the flying suit on me. But, the fear of the tsunami hitting where I was, was so high that I said okay, let me start the helicopter. This helicopter can carry close to 25 passengers. It generally takes 20 minutes for me to start the helicopter as per the SOP. But that day the fear was so high that I started the helicopter in less than two minutes.

Immediately I got airborne and when I got airborne, I saw that the first wave already hit the island and it also receded. Once it receded, it is almost like shaving, it has completely polished off in the entire area, all the trees, all the buildings were all washed up. And then when the wave receded and I landed back, by then all the people around the airfield started running towards the airspace, and all of them came close to the chopper. I came down and I told people that don’t worry, the wave which has come has receded. Nothing to worry. While I was telling them this, the second wave hit the island, and the second wave was much bigger than the first wave.

There were oil tankers, when I say oil tankers, these are places where the diesel or petrol used to come in big ships. And it used to be offloaded in these oil tankers. These are big tanks which can boost. I don’t know, what is the capacity of those, which are almost the size of three storey building, and which probably will be around 30 metres or so. That particular tanker flipped from one side of the runway to the other side, because of the second wave and while I was telling people not to worry and this thing happened, people were really scared of what’s going on. I again got airborne, and that is the time I saw a lot of people on tree tops, building tops, and some of the people also in the waves.

That is the time me and my co-pilot decided to winch up people and we flew for continuously three and a half hours to the full endurance of the helicopter and reached up from treetops, rooftops and the waves, around 250 people and got them to the elevated place in the islands so that all of them were safe. And once the obvious rescue relief efforts happened, we evacuated close to 40,000 people from the island.

The whole island, which was covered by the airfield, which is covered by debris, we organised efforts to clear the debris. And then in a period of one week, we evacuated close to 40,000 people.

And this was the reason Dr. Abdul Kalam, that time was the President of India. He invited us to Rashtrapati Bhawan just to understand because we were the only people who have seen the full tsunami from air in the firsthand experience. He just wanted to understand what happened that day. We went there and explained the whole thing. And that’s how he was so impressed with the work we have done and the valor that we have displayed, and because of which he announced ‘Shaurya Chakra’ for me and ‘Kirti Chakra’ for the captain of the aircraft. So, I think this was the incident because of which I was awarded the ‘Shaurya Chakra’.

Sanjay Swamy 28:26

Superb insights. Certainly fascinating and you also mentioned that during your time in the Air Force, you also piloted Dr. Kalam and then several other VVIPs. I think there are some parting thoughts, your experiences from the Air Force and the armed forces in general, certainly helped in a business like MyGate. There is an adversity that you get to experience which founders also tend to experience in different ways. Share some closing thoughts for founders, especially, given that this is the 73rd Independence Day coming up, where we’re at the moment right now facing and recovering from COVID hopefully, actually, still sort of going through that. It’s a lot of adversity in general. What are some of the tips and techniques and tools that you were equipped with in the armed forces that you think would translate for entrepreneurs to share adversity or to deal with adversity?

Vijay Arisetty 29:28

I’ll be a little bit more specific with respect to a helicopter pilot, because that was the core thing I used to do, flying the aircraft at that moment was 10% of a task, 90% of the time, we used to think about, if there is an emergency what I need to do? Because we were flying an aircraft which is very expensive. There are close to 20 passengers in the helicopter.

At any point in time we need to be sure that if anything happens, I take the right kind of action so that I don’t put the machine and the people under risk. So flying used to be 10% of my effort, with a collective and stick, just to fly the aircraft wasn’t a tough matter. 90% was thinking through any eventualities that I need to react for. I actually tell the same lessons to the entrepreneur, establishing your minimum viable product in product market fit, is an experience in the journey of an entrepreneur, that is the easiest thing that you can do, things will become difficult day after day, when you see that your product market fit is established and people are really loving your product.

Actually the true game starts after that. Thinking long term and building the organisation with the right kind of people, the right kind of culture and thinking four years, five years ahead of time in terms of how the product is likely to behave, what are the tech interventions or the product interventions, the marketing interventions that you need to do at the moment, so that, that particular day you will not face any problems. Second is, what is the kind of culture you need to develop within the company so that you don’t face problems when you have lots of people across multiple geographies. Many of whom you will not even meet.

So, this all becomes important. And most of the time all of us think that okay, we will solve for this as and when the problem appears. The more you delay it, the opportunity cost is going to be much higher. When I say the opportunity cost of experiencing the problem, and then trying to solve the problem is going to consume a lot of time, especially a startup, which is supposed to be in the growth phase. You need to worry about how you ensure the growth of the company.

So I would say that always think ahead of time, and start building systems, process, culture, people, process, products, thinking about four to five years in advance. I think this would be my advice to a startup founder.

Sanjay Swamy 32:15

It’s very difficult though, for founders who are thinking about survival, to be thinking also four to five years ahead and those who do that really pull it off. I think there’s also the fable story of Jeff Bezos as well, who spends the first three hours of the day really focused on what’s important for Amazon 6 to 10 years out. So it’s great that you’re able to do that. Vijay, thank you so much for your time, wish you and everyone in India here a very happy 73rd Independence Day. And on behalf of all of us, I salute you and all those serving the nation today in defending us and look forward to chatting with you in person soon. Take care.

Vijay Arisetty 32:59

Thank you Sanjay. I really enjoyed this.

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