Helical IT had started as a pureplay services company and used to provide services in the domain of Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, ETL, and Big Data Technologies and that too primarily focused on opensource technologies. Later they developed expertise on proprietary technologies as well. The list of BI tools expertise includes Jaspersoft, Pentaho, PowerBI, Quicksight, and Tableau. ETL tools expertise includes Talend (Jasper ETL), Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle), AWS Glue, Spark, etc. They also have expertise in data modelling and data warehouse designing along with big data migration which includes Cassandra, Druid, Drill, Presto, Mongo, and many others.

After having worked on various BI products they launched their own open-source BI product Helical Insight first version in 2016 and right now it is on version 4.1. The product has been built on java with front end on react and it is a completely browser-based product. They provide it in two versions one is completely free and the second is paid version. The paid version is also more than 85% most cost-effective as compared to other enterprises’ BI software.

THE KEY PEOPLE

Helical IT has got two co-founders i.e.
Nitin Sahu and Nikhilesh Tiwari

Nikhilesh Tiwari: Education qualifications include Engg from Pune University followed by MBA from Symbiosis. After engineering Nikhilesh had worked with Siemens and then after MBA he worked for a few years in the telecom sector. Nikhilesh comes with vast experience in marketing and sales. In the company, Nikhilesh is taking care of marketing, sales, and finance.
Recently in an exclusive interview with Entrepreneur Insights, they have shed some light on their journey till now.

Nitin Sahu : Education qualification includes Engg. from Pune University from IT stream followed by Post Graduation specializing in the domain of Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence. Nitin has got experience working in startups as well as MNCs like Wipro. In the company, Nitin is taking care of Product Development, technology, and operations.

What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome ?

One of the biggest challenges has been in terms of hiring and retaining. Even though India adds a lot of new engineers to the talent pool but most of them are lacking in skill sets. It is always very difficult to find a good resource. The second problem which we had faced was with the product Helical Insight. Being a new product, we did not have a lot of track records or references, etc. to show. Hence it was always difficult to convince new customers during the initial phases.

What does revolution mean to you ?

Revolution means anything which is just not an incremental change but an exponential change. Anything which can disrupt an industry, anything which can change the entire habit of users.

How has the industry changed over the years ?

The speed with which technology is changing right now is amazing. We have seen a lot of changes in the DW and BI industry recently. The industry has matured a lot and there is an increased awareness amongst customers of all sizes about the value a BI can bring into their decision making. Earlier only traditional RDBMS kind of data was supported in the BI tools, but now all kinds of data can be pushed into and analyzed with the BI product.

Also, one of the major changes in the evolution of the BI space has been the adoption and usage of self-service BI tools. With the evolution and maturing of self-service drag-drop BI tools like Helical Insight, it’s now possible for even non-technical business users to create their analysis as well as a dashboard with minimal efforts.

Tell us about the client base?

We have served diverse domains like telecom, banking, education, supply chain, clinical trials, energy, analytics, security, vertical ERPs, call center, and many more. Some of the biggest names include clients like CA Technologies, Tata Communications, Fractal Analytics, Technip, etc. We even have worked with the government, like the Government of Marshall Islands, the Government of Kiribati Islands, and other SMEs.

When it comes to our services offerings we cater to US, Canada .and European customers. For product offerings, we have worldwide customers including the USA, India, Middle East, Australia, Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia, South America, etc.

When it comes to the company, what are you most proud of ?

The one thing which we have been extremely proud of was being able to make the transition from being a service-based company to developing the product, despite being bootstrapped. Having provided services we have been able to generate good profit a part of which was being used to sustain the development of our product. Also, the services provided immense learning of the issues of existing products and client expectations.

What do you see as the most difficult task in being in your Industry ?

The challenges are mostly for hiring and retaining good talents. The second problem is in terms of a new product it is always difficult to convince prospects of trying and using it as compared to the established players in the market.

How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization ?

We as a company are always open to new ideas and innovations. We discuss issues with the team, set them free to come up with new ideas and inputs. Based on the best probable solution, we allow the person or team to work on the same and reward accordingly.

What are some of your future endeavors ?

We have a lot of things which we have planned for our product as well as services. On the product side, we are very aggressively working on a major version release i.e. version 5.0 of our product which is having a lot of UX and functionality improvement on our product and other futuristic including a UI-driven workflow engine.
We are planning to raise funding in the next two quarters and also planning for offshore offices as well as have regional partners in non-native English-speaking countries for more outreach to clients.

What is the best advice you can give to our readers ?

Set of advice to young entrepreneurs who do have a plan to start something of their own.

• There has never been a better time to do a startup. Don’t be
  afraid of multiple failures, all you need is just one success.
• Have perseverance. There is no overnight success.
• Identify the gaps in the market and try to fulfill that gap. Try
  to solve a genuine issue.