How this small town boy started Tenderbolt and did business of more than 20k euros in a year

This story is a part of ”Startup Spotlight’ series where we discover inspiring early stage startup stories which have been powered by the .com/.net domains. This is a series sponsored by Verisign. YourStory exercises full editorial control over these posts.

As operator of the infrastructure for .com and .net, Verisign enables the world to connect online with reliability and confidence, anytime, anywhere.

Sanmit Shah hails from Telhara, a small Taluka in Akola District in Maharashtra. 26 years old Sanmit grew up in a humble family where education was held very highly and there were high hopes from him. His father was an Agriculturist while his mother was a homemaker. “I completed my S.S.C & H.S.C but was a pretty average student,” he says. His father wanted Sanmit to become a doctor but he wasn't good with academics and scoring ‘marks’. Sanmit was creative and loved science, which led him to participate in NCSTC competition till National Level and he received the ‘Child Scientist’ award from GOI. But performance in school remained average and he couldn't get through to MBBS, his father’s dream. “It was good in a way. We had to settle for Computer Engineering in St. Francis institute of Technology, Mumbai and I loved it," says Sanmit.

This is when he got his first laptop and was introduced to massive, exciting internet. “I was amazed at how information is available free of cost and how business can be built using it!” says Sanmit. Through his college, he got a job at Mphasis which he did for three months. Not really interested in coding from a cubicle, Sanit was thinking of ways in which a business can be built using technology. To gain more knowledge, he joined Edelweiss Broking Ltd. as an Equity Sales Executive. “I performed well in Edelweiss and later after three months joined Tendernews.com because of the concept they were working on,” says Sanmit.

After three quick stints, Sanmit took some time out and decided to start up on his own. This is how TenderBolt came into existence in October 2012. His previous employer was certainly an influence with what he currently does. Registered as Ibay Solutions Pvt. Ltd., TenderBolt is a portal dealing in Global Procurement Information Business. They collect and consolidate Tenders, Projects, Procurement News, Contract Awards, RFQs, RFPs, from more than 10,000+ different sources, more than 150+ countries and provide this information to their clients (Global MNCs) through host of Online services like website access & Email Alerts within 24 hours.

Finding a name was pretty difficult and tiresome for Sanmit. “Most off the names we chose were taken! I hated companies who used to park domains. It took almost 7-8 days to come to a pretty decent name which had some meaning (Fast like thunderbolt), easily & globally pronounceable and within 10 characters. Finding a Domain name was very difficult but we are happy with what we have,” he says. On a daily basis, the company processes and uploads more than 10,000+ notices.

TenderBolt has an algorithm which goes through hundreds of sites and gather information about tenders and contract awards (is crawling legal?). This information is then brought together into one consumable report. In the initial days, Sanmit floated around a few samples of the kind of reports they were offering and the clients found value in them. He moved his business to Mumbai where he manages a team of 7 at the moment.

TenderBolt works on an annual subscription model and takes advance from clients to subscribe to their services. Talking of the traction, Sanmit says, “Well, we launched our website in May 2013. It was difficult to grow in such competitive market but still we manage to do business of more than EURO 20,000 in the first 12 months.” Their ideal target market includes all global MNCs interested in tendering, but their focus is on Europe, Middle East & South East Asian companies. Sanmit started out with midsized European companies which were familiar with such services and then expanded.

Sanmit has been able to enter make a business in a rather unique area and he is now looking to concentrate on improving their technology and expanding their reach. Initial days were a struggle but the company is sustainable now but they're looking to raise funds to fuel growth. The market itself seems to be large enough and if Tenderbolt is able to increase its repertoire of offerings, they surely seem to be on to something.

Website: Tenderbolt