Using technology and service capabilities to transform procurement processes of organizations
It all began with providing solution to a particular technical problemfaced by her husband and his friends whichhas now turned into an Organization for Lakshmi Gadiraju – Founder and CTO of EffiGO, a B2B SaaS provider. After providing the solution, Ms. Gadiraju felt so much engrossed that she started looking for opportunities if such solutions could be provided to the market. At that point of time, she was well aware of the situation, wherein there was a paucity of a right leader which ultimately motivated her to pick the responsibility. Lakshmi Gadiraju is a happy-go-lucky and tech enthusiast.
Although entrepreneurship was never in her mind, having grown-up in a business family and then married to a high-octane husband, who only dreams entrepreneurship and helping him solve few obstacles turned her into an entrepreneur by chance. Her most important responsibility as the CTO is to ensure that they are proactive in their approach of developing their technology. Most of her decisions revolve around ensuring that they are constantly developing the solution internally based on their observations as well as the inputs of their clients. Along with this, charting the technology roadmap for further solution development for the next year is her key responsibility.
When Venkata Raju (Founder and CEO of EffiGO) joined her to expand the product offering to compete with global leaders in their solution space, product development was a challenge in view of the limited resources. It was a big decision to put their entire financial resources into the company. “But I am proud to say that we have been successful in not only competing with the global leaders but also replacing them at large enterprise accounts”, says Ms. Gadiraju.
Team of veterans with more than 30+ years of experience in procurement and technology
Talking aboutthe work at EffiGO, they use technology and service capabilities to transform procurement processes of organizations while generating more savings, improving resource efficiencies, and enhancing process transparency.Their team has many veterans with more 30+ years of experience in procurement and technology. They try to understand the pain/obstacles of their customers and solve those and build products which can help customers to grow their business. Even with the organization,they listen to the issues faced by the team. Their C-Suite team has always believed in empowering and enabling their team.
For their entire team, the most important part is their core value. Their core values of Trust and Ethics are at the core of their functioning. “We believe that any organisation that partners with us should be proud of being associated as with as much as we are proud of being associated with them”, asserts Ms. Gadiraju. Hence, they are quite open and upfront in their dealings and believe in developing long term relationships with their client partners. They follow their values in their interactions both internally and with external partners. They believe in open communication and have ensured that any of their team members can reach out to anyone in the top management for conversation to share suggestions, opinions, or just a dialogue.
Deep insight of getting into the root cause
Throughout her entrepreneurial journey, she has developed a deep insight of getting into the root cause of the pain points. She is a firm believer of “devil is in the detail” – trying to go that extra mile to anticipate thenext situation and solving it fully. She goes the extra mile to try and complete the task today itself without pushing it tomorrow. She intends to incorporate AI & ML into her solution in the next few years. “As we are working with clients across 17 industries, it is my responsibility to ensure that we understand the industry-specific possibilities that AI & ML have and develop and train robust models accordingly”, she says.
Besides her professional life, she loves to do watercolor painting in her leisure time. “Everytime I do a painting it amuses me and gives me more energy”, she adds. She is very interested in exploring places, people and culture. “Some of these memories are what I try to put into my paintings”, she adds further. Another interest that takes atleast 30 minutes of her time every day is gardening. “Being able to grow few vegetables and fruits on my terrace garden is therapeutic.”
Ms. Gadiraju has a piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs. She says, “If you are able to create a value to your customers don’t worry about competition, build strong teams – then it’s the great sense of satisfaction you would get for yourself.”