A Conversation with Hansel.io — Runtime Feature Management Infrastructure
Continuing the conversations with our portfolio companies as part of Endiya’s Inside Out Video Series, we next spoke to the founders of Hansel.io, runtime feature management infrastructure, to discuss key aspects of the venture that are contributing to its growth and success. The discussion was facilitated by Abhishek Srivastava, Director, Endiya Partners, who leads the investment in Hansel.io at Endiya.
Hansel.io is a feature middleware infrastructure that eliminates the complexities involved in running cross-platform, cross-team business initiatives. Every attribute of a feature can be continuously modified at runtime and sent to any user segment, in one stroke, across devices, and its impact measured, without the need for multiple releases or developer bottlenecks. Behind the scenes, Hansel’s back-end SDKs create a hand-shake with your internal backend systems such that any complex user segment can be created within a couple of minutes.
Introducing Hansel.io
We began our conversation by deciphering the exact problem that Hansel.io is endeavouring to solve. Co-founder & CEO Varun Ramamurthy, explained how, business needs that translate into features often tend to get bottlenecked at a developer level, which leads to a lot of wasted potential revenue. Further he elaborated, how Hansel’s enterprise scale configuration engine allows you to configure any part of your product real time.
As we delve deeper into how Hansel’s solution allows various stakeholders to handle different modules and its ability to create multiple variations, the ingenuity of the platform becomes more apparent. It provides dynamic capabilities to app developers and brings in hyper-agility to product management, addressing a problem that is prevalent across businesses.
Key Differentiators of Hansel.io Solution
Though Hansel.io is potentially a category-creator, there are certain other tools in the developer and app ecosystem that help in product development, analytics and optimization. We sought to identify the key aspects that differentiate Hansel’s product from the others.
Co-founder and CTO, Parminder Singh explained how Hansel.io focuses on product optimization, by having a unique tech stack that is built on key data pairs which makes it extendable across platforms. This gives businesses the power to control user experiences in near real-time across their products and platforms, and the ability to measure the impact at a very granular level.
Product Strategy and Roadmap
When building a truly disruptive product, one needs a clear vision and executable strategy. Hence, the importance of prioritizing features and evolving the product roadmap in the right direction, cannot be undermined.
In this respect, the Hansel co-founders underlined the importance of constantly engaging customers for validation early on. Also, Hansel had a clear set of guiding principles for enabling decisions on customization, which included scalability and alignment with the original vision.
The Team, the Talent, and Pearls of Wisdom
With outstanding backgrounds and experience in firms like Flipkart, Zynga, Rediff and Disney, we were keen to learn more about how the team came together and what inspired them to build Hansel.
The team’s first-hand experience of facing similar challenges in their previous organizations was the key driving factor for initiating the Hansel journey. Further, the ability of the founders to build a team that shares purpose and vision, has led to near-zero attrition till date, which is a feat for any young start-up.
Given that in recent times, we have witnessed an upsurge in Indian entrepreneurs challenging the status quo, to build globally relevant enterprise products, we asked the founders for their most critical piece of advice to this budding community. The clear messages were — 1. The solution being built should outlast the platform and 2. Incorporate feedback in a judicious manner while staying true to the company’s vision.
Throughout the conversation, the enthusiasm and energy of the team is evident and gives one a sense of how Hansel is building a great Indian SaaS company targeting global markets.
Endiya Partners’ journey as an early investor in Hansel.io, has been tremendously exciting and we continue to work closely with the team to build a truly global product.
