‘Brothers on a Mission’
With roots in the enterprising Gujarati community, it is hardly a surprise that Hardik and Kushal Sanghvi found their true calling in entrepreneurship. While Hardik began his entrepreneurial stint in 1998 by selling Ayurvedic medicines through a web portal, his younger sibling, Kushal, started as a cloth merchant in his teens. Their entrepreneurial endeavours were briefly paused when Hardik joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) after his engineering degree.
Soon after, Kushal set up a small software venture in Ahmedabad while pursuing his undergrad education. Hardik, based in USA, would route software development projects to the venture. The brothers worked for 15–16 unflagging hours every day. Such was their passion for entrepreneurship. Their efforts gradually bore fruit and they expanded their operations. The move into a bigger office and their ability to financially sustain a larger team, established the potential of this venture to the brothers. In 2003, Hardik returned to India and co-founded another IT company with Kushal. Working in a rapidly evolving market, the brothers experimented with a few startup ideas and, in 2007, co-founded VMukti, one of India’s first providers of low bandwidth webcasting services.
“Resolve to succeed, no matter what.”
They say ‘dreams don’t work until you do.’ VMukti’s success can wholly be attributed to the brothers’ hard work and perseverance. Onboarding Google as one of their first clients bears testimony to this. Their hard work of over 13 years brought to them their moment of glory during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Their webcasting platform was used to connect Prime Ministerial candidate Shri Narendra Modi with 150 remote locations. This was a matter of pride for the startup which was talking baby steps. Hardik remembers the feeling of deep gratification he felt upon witnessing the remotely located crowds erupting with joy when being addressed by their leader Modi.
Their climb to success was no cakewalk. Being located in Ahmedabad brought a series of challenges, including lack of funding and local R&D support systems. Continuous attrition often meant that the brothers had to juggle various roles.
During the tough times, their family came to the rescue. The brothers convinced their father to lead the finance division of VMukti. They consider their family to be the safe haven, where they find their stresses melting away.
Hardik and Kushal’s story epitomises the importance of working relentlessly. They have recently started rendering cloud-based video surveillance facilities as a service to retail and government customers enabling these organisations monitor over 100,000 locations in 18 states across the country. With an unwavering commitment to making VMukti big, the duo is excited about the future. Their dedication to integrate the remote into the mainstream is unrivalled and they are committed to generating sustainable value for all stakeholders. Such strong resolve almost always gets things done!
About the Startup:
VMukti is one of the pioneer forces involved in the IOT transformation of M2M video communication with proven cloud based video streaming and surveillance platform handling in cloud over 3TB of daily data and thousands of live feeds. With its Patent Pending Video Compression algorithms VMukti saves up to 70% costs for its customers. VMukti ships cloud based baby monitors, smart home cameras, traffic & ANPR cameras, & cloud DVR/NVRs globally.
CIIE Initiatives has recently completed 10 years of its incorporation. We are proud to present the book “CIIE — Celebrating 10 years of Experiments and Entrepreneurs” which chronicles the last decade of CIIE Initiatives and celebrates the stories of heroes aka its entrepreneurs.
