Bhupendra Khanal – Founder, India

Bhupendra Khanal is the founder & CEO of In-Rev Systems, an IT company based in Bangalore, India. Although he is originally from Nepal, he is one of the most influential twitter users in India. He is an avid user of his company’s flagship product Buzzom, which was recently nominated as one of the top 100 twitter apps around the world.

For those who don’t know you, can you tell us something about yourself?

I run InRev as its Chief Executive. Have analytics background and enjoy data. I am a number fellow.
Have done Computer Science graduate and a firm believer of Technology. People know me as Leplan for my nick in Twitter.

Do you like bananas?

Oh yeah, I love Bananas. We use to eat bananas and often skip breakfasts and dinners in college. Now I don’t eat that much but I think I can live days with this awesome fruit.

Have you always wanted to start your own company? How did it begin?

I always thought of starting my own company since my childhood. Job never fascinated me.

When I first got into my job as Business Analyst at Global Analytics, I enjoyed it. But thoughts kept on hitting me that I had to start my own. I didn’t know what company I would be starting and who will be with me; I was open to starting a restaurant to starting an Analytics Consulting firm.

I looked at Global Analytics CEO Krishna, COO Steve and Director Nikhil, and found that all 3 were ex-FICO folks. As I looked at these 3 people as my ideals, I decided to move to Fair Isaac (now FICO). I joined the company as Marketing Analytics Consultant.

After nearly 6 months in FICO, I got a exciting offer from Ex-VP of Analytics for Citibank, Anunay Gupta to start a company with him and Marketing Head of Kingfisher Beer Roy Cherian. These two were established business leaders and it was a privilege for me to be the founding member of Marketelligent.

After a year I started getting attracted towards software products, and left the consulting space to start InRev. I am lucky to find the team mates for InRev. Guys have passion, belief in performance and vision to build big company.

You have multiple popular products, namely Buzzom, GT etc. What, do you think, is the most successful product you’ve built so far?

Buzzom is by far the most successful product we have built so far. It has not only given us good client base and revenue but also given global recognition. Buzzom is covered by mainline US media like PC World, Smartcompany and Forbes, and we believe Buzzom is clearly among the Top 10 Apps in Twitter Ecosystem.

Can you share some traffic & revenue stats for GT & Buzzom?

Buzzom serves 300k+ absolute unique visitors monthly and get around 1.3 million pageviews. It is growing fast and we aim to serve 2 million people monthly by year end.

GT is our Technology Blog and it comes out of passion. The numbers are strong for it as it gets more than 100k pageviews per month and hits Digg front page often. GT is also most social of all Indian Blogs.

I want to make things clear here that we are product specialists and GT comes out of writing passion alone.
Main agenda for company is to make Buzzom a household name for all Social Media enthusiasts.

You recently launched a premium version of Buzzom. We’re sure it is doing well. How do you compare with the other premium products available in the market?

Buzzom Premium is created with promise. It is not an app that is based on features like other products in the market. We are solving business problems of business managers and analysts, and we are working to rebrand the product as Brand Management, Marketing Campaign and Social CRM. You will come to know more on this in 4 to 6 weeks period.

Buzzom is built just for passion and enthusiasm of our team, and the encouragement of our partners, evangelists and advisors. We are looking to add good investment and are in talks with angels and VCs. Once the investment comes in we will go all out to the market and work to capture the maximum market share.

Who are your biggest competitors? How are your business/professional relations with them?

Our biggest competitors are Hootsuite, Radian6 and Objective Marketer. Unlike all of these companies, we are self funded and having lack of big marketing budget.

We enjoy good relations with all of our competitors big and small. We are here in the Social Media ecosystem to stay, and not for quick money. This positioning of the company leaves us with certain responsibilities towards Social Networks and other Ecosystem Companies.

We do healthy competition and try to beat by performance. Our competitors respect us and most of the time they copy us. We let them do it and work to beat them with hard work and dedication.

What is your next big idea, your own Proud Idea?

My biggest idea is the integration of the World Data. Now we are working to integrate the social media platforms and giving a better ecosystem for the social media enthusiasts. Next level would be to integrate the Social Media to Website Usage Data, then the Web and Non-Web data.

The final level of integration will include integrating the Telecom, Finance and Utility Usage Data. World has to be transparent while respecting the users privacy. People tend to mix privacy with transparency, there is a thin line between the two. It is like stupidity and courage. While you do courageous things people take you as a stupid is you fail, but they applaud you when you accomplish. Within the boundary the World needs integrations breaking country, religion, corporate structure and competition barriers.

If you were given a chance to acquire any company you wish, which would that be? and why?

I would buy FICO for two reasons – first, I worked for the company and I know how much it is valuable. The company has lots of patents and IPs, and the very valuable R&D Research men. They are into data works and enjoy awesome branding. FICO is also hugely undervalued in the market and I am sure it will come up again with a bang very soon.

The second reason for buying FICO is the scope of expansion. FICO has built products in Marketing, Risk and Fraud Analytics, where they are amongst the Global Top players. I want to take this expertise to Web.

Believe me, the Analytics what you have seen in Google Analytics and other Online Analytics tools is too naïve. FICO has the experience and knowledge built over last 55 years in Data and Analytics. I feel sorry for not seeing FICO in Web; the company is ignoring such a huge opportunity.

3 things we don’t know about you?

• I am passionate about Football, and Argentina is my favorite team. I am looking forward for an exciting World Cup this year and my team wins it. I am betting high on Messi, Tavez and Milito.
• Second thing you probably don’t know is my passion for computer games. I spend at least 5 to 10 hours every week playing games, mainly Age of Empires.
• You probably know that I don’t like Pudina (mint) but you might not know that I don’t like Apple too. I like most fruits but a big NO to Apple.
  

Your facebook profile/page: http://www.facebook.com/people/Bhupendra-Khanal/584942342
Twitter: @leplan
Any other medium of contact?
LinkedIn: http://in.linkedin.com/in/khanalbhupendra