NEWSROOM
From FOMO to fortune: Pradeep Raman’s journey
15 February 2024
For someone who’s built an incredibly successful entrepreneurial career, it’s ironic that Pradeep Raman’s first foray into entrepreneurship came about predominantly as the result of “FOMO”, he laughs. Pradeep was still at school when he and a group of friends decided to participate in the Young Enterprise Challenge. “It was 1998 and the Internet was new to New Zealand. One of my friends had an idea to start a web hosting company as part of the challenge,” he explains. “I didn’t have much interest, but tagged along.”
The experience proved to be an unexpectedly valuable one. “It ended up being an excellent introduction to both business and the Internet era that was about to explode,” notes Pradeep. “Apart from the technical knowledge, I discovered that I had ‘the gift of the gab’. I had a talent for making presentations and entertaining an audience. I also learned that attracting customers is an incredibly tough challenge.”
Pradeep took these fledgling entrepreneurial skills to the University of Auckland, complementing his academic studies (a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering) with participation in CIE’s landmark entrepreneurial programme, the Velocity $100k Challenge (then called the Spark $40k Challenge). “By this time I was completely obsessed with e-commerce and technology start-ups,” he remembers. “I was even more obsessed with winning the Velocity competition.” He certainly had no shortage of ideas – a battery-heated motorcycle jacket was one novel concept: “In those days I was coming up with a new business idea every five minutes!”
It took three years of enthusiastic participation in the Velocity competition before he and his then girlfriend (now wife) Swati Sharma eventually took out the top prize for their Myskillpool venture, an online recruitment directory designed to bring traditional paper-based CVs into a multi-media format: “People could profile themselves using rich video and showcase their best attributes. Employers could subscribe for a fee and contact candidates they were interested in.”
Despite their win and subsequent support from business incubator The Icehouse, subscriptions to the site were slower than they’d hoped. “We learned some hard lessons, primarily that we needed to listen with an unbiased mind when doing customer research instead of hearing what you want to,” he explains.
However, their belief in the concept remained strong. “We felt that people liked the idea. The hurdle was that they didn’t want their current employers to know that they were open to other jobs, so anonymity was key.” They designed and built a much improved service and relaunched as Anonymouse. This time the venture was a resounding success and two years later, with exciting new opportunities beckoning, they sold Anonymouse to a recruitment software company.
Competing in the Velocity $100k Challenge provided the foundation for his entrepreneurial career, reflects Pradeep. Because he was studying for a BE, “I didn’t have much of a business understanding, so I went to every course and learning session organised by Velocity. Eventually I became adept at speaking the language of business, start-ups and financial projections,” he says.
Pradeep details three key learnings from his Velocity experiences. The first is the importance of community, inspired by founding CIE Director Geoff Whitcher, who is known to alumni as “The Godfather”. “Great big things need great big champions who commit totally and wholeheartedly. I’m thinking specifically about Geoff Whitcher – without his relentless work in front of and behind the scenes, a large ecosystem of entrepreneurship would not have developed in Auckland.” The second comes as no surprise: “No matter how much work you think you have put in, much more will be needed for success! Dig deeper, but make sure that you enjoy every bit of the journey.” Finally, “Be single-minded and stay the course. But know when to call time if something isn’t working – there’s a fine balance between determination and flogging a dead horse. Keep your mind on the destination, not the present vehicle.”
Completing an MBA (from Cranfield University in the UK), building another start-up (Adtronik), and working for six years as a venture capital investor in London further honed Pradeep’s already impressive entrepreneurial skills, and in 2016 he launched Burrow, his most successful venture to date. Burrow offered a digital solution to the “nightmare” paper-based process of mortgage applications in the UK. “Burrow offered a hyper-personalised online service for people to search the market, find the optimal mortgage loan, apply for it and complete the entire process within a convenient digital dashboard on their mobile devices,” he explains. “There was an opportunity to ride the digitisation wave, along with the direct-to-consumer self-serve trends.”
A couple of years after its launch, Burrow was acquired by Finova, a large provider of enterprise software and systems to banks and building societies in the UK. Pradeep joined Finova as their Director of Digital, a role which evolved into leading the “end-to-end process of innovation – all the way from ideation to market launch and beyond for a number of new products,” he says.
Pradeep is, therefore, well-placed to offer unique insights on current tech trends and the latest awe-inspiring innovations. Interestingly, however, he sounds a note of caution. “I think it is time for us to stop being excited by default when talking about new technologies. We have gone from building tech that can change our lives to tech that can end our lives. Not just by malicious abuse by bad actors, but by entirely well-meaning individuals being carried away by the daily pressures to grow, stand out and compete in a heady frenzy,” he observes. “When we are empowered with such unfathomable technologies, we should be asking ourselves whether we should be developing them at all. We need to reestablish the fact that technology is there to serve our well-being. Today people are sacrificing their well-being to build technology for its own sake.”
The same thought-provoking perspective informs Pradeep’s advice to students and budding entrepreneurs – advice which reads as more challenge than checklist. “Students and budding entrepreneurs need to think more holistically than the last few generations. They must transcend the ‘growth and profits at all costs’ mentality that has driven the last 40-50 years of enterprise,” he asserts. “Instead, they should take deep pride in working with authenticity for the welfare of themselves and others. They should truly consider the benefits their work can bring to living beings and the planet at large.”
15 February 2024
For someone who’s built an incredibly successful entrepreneurial career, it’s ironic that Pradeep Raman’s first foray into entrepreneurship came about predominantly as the result of “FOMO”, he laughs. Pradeep was still at school when he and a group of friends decided to participate in the Young Enterprise Challenge. “It was 1998 and the Internet was new to New Zealand. One of my friends had an idea to start a web hosting company as part of the challenge,” he explains. “I didn’t have much interest, but tagged along.”
The experience proved to be an unexpectedly valuable one. “It ended up being an excellent introduction to both business and the Internet era that was about to explode,” notes Pradeep. “Apart from the technical knowledge, I discovered that I had ‘the gift of the gab’. I had a talent for making presentations and entertaining an audience. I also learned that attracting customers is an incredibly tough challenge.”
Pradeep took these fledgling entrepreneurial skills to the University of Auckland, complementing his academic studies (a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering) with participation in CIE’s landmark entrepreneurial programme, the Velocity $100k Challenge (then called the Spark $40k Challenge). “By this time I was completely obsessed with e-commerce and technology start-ups,” he remembers. “I was even more obsessed with winning the Velocity competition.” He certainly had no shortage of ideas – a battery-heated motorcycle jacket was one novel concept: “In those days I was coming up with a new business idea every five minutes!”
It took three years of enthusiastic participation in the Velocity competition before he and his then girlfriend (now wife) Swati Sharma eventually took out the top prize for their Myskillpool venture, an online recruitment directory designed to bring traditional paper-based CVs into a multi-media format: “People could profile themselves using rich video and showcase their best attributes. Employers could subscribe for a fee and contact candidates they were interested in.”
Despite their win and subsequent support from business incubator The Icehouse, subscriptions to the site were slower than they’d hoped. “We learned some hard lessons, primarily that we needed to listen with an unbiased mind when doing customer research instead of hearing what you want to,” he explains.
However, their belief in the concept remained strong. “We felt that people liked the idea. The hurdle was that they didn’t want their current employers to know that they were open to other jobs, so anonymity was key.” They designed and built a much improved service and relaunched as Anonymouse. This time the venture was a resounding success and two years later, with exciting new opportunities beckoning, they sold Anonymouse to a recruitment software company.
Competing in the Velocity $100k Challenge provided the foundation for his entrepreneurial career, reflects Pradeep. Because he was studying for a BE, “I didn’t have much of a business understanding, so I went to every course and learning session organised by Velocity. Eventually I became adept at speaking the language of business, start-ups and financial projections,” he says.
Pradeep details three key learnings from his Velocity experiences. The first is the importance of community, inspired by founding CIE Director Geoff Whitcher, who is known to alumni as “The Godfather”. “Great big things need great big champions who commit totally and wholeheartedly. I’m thinking specifically about Geoff Whitcher – without his relentless work in front of and behind the scenes, a large ecosystem of entrepreneurship would not have developed in Auckland.” The second comes as no surprise: “No matter how much work you think you have put in, much more will be needed for success! Dig deeper, but make sure that you enjoy every bit of the journey.” Finally, “Be single-minded and stay the course. But know when to call time if something isn’t working – there’s a fine balance between determination and flogging a dead horse. Keep your mind on the destination, not the present vehicle.”
Completing an MBA (from Cranfield University in the UK), building another start-up (Adtronik), and working for six years as a venture capital investor in London further honed Pradeep’s already impressive entrepreneurial skills, and in 2016 he launched Burrow, his most successful venture to date. Burrow offered a digital solution to the “nightmare” paper-based process of mortgage applications in the UK. “Burrow offered a hyper-personalised online service for people to search the market, find the optimal mortgage loan, apply for it and complete the entire process within a convenient digital dashboard on their mobile devices,” he explains. “There was an opportunity to ride the digitisation wave, along with the direct-to-consumer self-serve trends.”
A couple of years after its launch, Burrow was acquired by Finova, a large provider of enterprise software and systems to banks and building societies in the UK. Pradeep joined Finova as their Director of Digital, a role which evolved into leading the “end-to-end process of innovation – all the way from ideation to market launch and beyond for a number of new products,” he says.
Pradeep is, therefore, well-placed to offer unique insights on current tech trends and the latest awe-inspiring innovations. Interestingly, however, he sounds a note of caution. “I think it is time for us to stop being excited by default when talking about new technologies. We have gone from building tech that can change our lives to tech that can end our lives. Not just by malicious abuse by bad actors, but by entirely well-meaning individuals being carried away by the daily pressures to grow, stand out and compete in a heady frenzy,” he observes. “When we are empowered with such unfathomable technologies, we should be asking ourselves whether we should be developing them at all. We need to reestablish the fact that technology is there to serve our well-being. Today people are sacrificing their well-being to build technology for its own sake.”
The same thought-provoking perspective informs Pradeep’s advice to students and budding entrepreneurs – advice which reads as more challenge than checklist. “Students and budding entrepreneurs need to think more holistically than the last few generations. They must transcend the ‘growth and profits at all costs’ mentality that has driven the last 40-50 years of enterprise,” he asserts. “Instead, they should take deep pride in working with authenticity for the welfare of themselves and others. They should truly consider the benefits their work can bring to living beings and the planet at large.”
EMAIL
CIE@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ
POSTAL ADDRESS
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND BUSINESS SCHOOL
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