Interview with Prem Singh–founder of dbcurve

About dbCurve

dbCurve one of the fast growing B2B contact database presenting one of the most accurate and efficient databases that could be put to utilization by the sales force. Within a short span of being in operation, dbCurve collected huge number of records and is continuing to grow them at top speed. The website built on open access model allows the users to view the records and also create their own, which they think will be useful for others. For every accurate record creation, they are awarded credits which can be traded to purchase information that you deem is useful to them.

The open access model encourages all our users to actively update the database with the most recent information thus guaranteeing high levels of accuracy. This apart, the dbcurve verification team periodically audits the records for their accuracy and ensures corrections where necessary.

We had an email interview with the founder of dbCurve, Prem Singh.

Q1: What prompted you to start this venture?
I had spent 3 years with YASU Technologies which was brought by SAP AG in 2007. YASU was started by six IITians and two of them are my mentors now, Satish Madhira & Sudheer Gentela who helped me to start the ClientCurve.

After YASU acquisition I shifted to SAP. But they wanted me to shift to Bangalore office and I was not inclined to do so. After many discussions with my mentors they encouraged me to start a company.

Being in sales for 6 years, I thought it is better to start with something I know and I started ClientCurve. Initially I took up the sales and marketing as a main stream for doing the business and later started working on both services and product idea. We recently launched our product dbCurve.com – Online Marketplace for Business Information and Business Contacts.

Q2:Who are your customers or targeted audience? What is the market size that you are looking to tap?

dbCurve aims at helping sales and marketing teams find accurate business contacts with all business information. Our target customers are sales and marketing teams or an individual who needs business contacts. We want dbCurve to be a one stop place for Company Information, Contacts, Product Details and Company Jobs.

We are trying to take 80% of the Business Information market share in India. Right now there is no company which provides accurate business contacts with phone and email id. We are also trying to take significant market share in US,UK and Asia including Middle East.

Q3: What is your business strategy?

dbCurve wants to solve critical problem that sales, marketing, public relations and recruiting personnel worldwide face, that is finding accurate business contacts.

dbCurve.com (Data-a-a-Service) aims to provide an online global directory of business contacts and company information and its online ecosystem will allow users to earn credits by keeping business contacts and company information up-to-date.

On every Company or Contact added, the users will get x Credits and they can also update other contacts if any other user buys contacts owner of that contact will get a royalty credits. There are negative credits for wrong information submitted. It is based on the Cloud Sourcing Model.

Q4: What uniqueness you bring to your customers to make it a memorable experience?

Accurate business information and business contacts which is hard to find currently. Our aim is to help companies build strong marketing teams who will be able to run a campaign in just 15 min (making target list in dbCurve.com — > downloading in excel > directly uploading list in CRM > send an email campaign) and any sales person should be able to find the business contacts with an email and phone number so that he can close more sales in a short time.

Q5: What you feel is the value of innovation in your business?

One of the major and most important things for any business is SALES and we are trying to reduce the sales cycle for any business. With our DaaS platform one can maintain and get accurate business contacts.

Q6: What is the scope of expansion and what is your vision about it?

Right now dbCurve has more then 1 Million Companies with 500k Business Contacts. We have 200 new registered users who are using dbCurve (beta) for business information. We want to scale to 15k Users with 2 Million Contacts in 6 months and get into other markets such as Asia and Middle East.

And in 3 years we are expecting to grow by 500k registered Users with 20 million Business Contacts.

Q7: Talking about your personal growth, how has been the journey as an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship, I learned from my mentors and I believe when you have good mentors, half of your challenges are solved. My mentors are very supportive. ClientCurve was able to maintain 40% YOY growth on its service business.

It was a challenge to maintain customers and manage delivery along with product development. We had customers from day one and we never faced any cash crunch till date. I still remember when my mentor said if you can survive for 2 years in your business then you can survive forever. These words keep me going till date.

I always wanted to own a company and was very much inclined towards developing a software product but funds were a big issue. So we started with sales support services and hired product development team to develop dbCurve.com.

Q8: Any hard lesson that you learnt as an entrepreneur?

First is your pay cheque reducing to 80% of what you were making before and hiring the right talent. If you are running a start-up, people take you very lightly. We had serious problems when people took the offers and did not join us. Due to which we have lost some of our good Clients too.

One will get his own reality check as an entrepreneur because you try to learn everything like Sales, Finance, Operations, Development and Managing employees. Building a founding team was one of the big challenge as no one was willing to join on a lower salary and most of the people don’t understand ESOP’s or equity.

Q9: Any advice for future entrepreneurs from your personal and professional experience.

Get a Good Mentor and do believe in him. Do what you are good at and do not just follow others blindly. Gut feeling is very important, do a reality check for your business, how much you can grow and what you need to take it to next level and so on. What always keeps me going are 4 Ps: Passion, Persistence, Patience & Perseverance.