Raksul was named “Forbes Startup of the Year” in 2018 and runs multiple very successful B2B e-commerce platforms that are transforming the industries they serve. A publicly traded company, Raksul is listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Raksul is making a strategic foray into India, aligned with its corporate mission to “Go Global”, with the first initiative of building a global CoE in Bangalore. The leaders of this new initiative are excited about the potential for this new Japan and India connection to bring the best of both worlds together to unlock new creativity.
Raksul has successfully embraced digitalization and now with this new center in India, they are embracing the power of globalization.
Meet the interviewees
Sanjay Rajasekhar
President, Raksul India Pvt. Ltd.
Sanjay Rajasekhar was brought on in September 2020 as the Head, Raksul India in Bangalore.
Yusuke Izumi
CTO
Yusuke Izumi has been the CTO at Raksul Inc. since 2016 and will act as the executive sponsor and the liaison along with other people involved in this project in Japan to make this new center in India successful.
Q: What factors made Raksul think of expanding its footprint globally?
Mr. Izumi
Raksul has been around for a decade. It started as a printing digital marketplace and has now expanded to logistics and TV commercials. Our CEO, Mr. Matsumoto’s idea is to expand on the vision of “Better systems, Better world.” This narrative is about the fact that there are so many industries out there that are not harnessing the power of technology. But now with the internet, data, web analytics, machine learning, and all these immersive technologies, these sectors can be completely reimagined. That’s the whole idea.
When we do that, there are many requirements, and the most significant is our talent. What enables us to move towards that vision are talented engineers. Now, around two years ago, I was doing a lot of work around recruiting and hiring great talent within Japan. But obviously, the number is structurally small. And it’s not that we want any kind of software engineer, we do have a technology stack that we focus on, there’s also a type of people that fit with our culture. And we can’t hire everybody. We are very, very selective about our talents. However, when we just limit ourselves to Japan alone, we’re not going to be able to sustain that.
The second thing is that when it comes to the software industry, Japan is not the first leader in this sector of software technology. It’s more of a follower than an innovator. Raksul needs to be a part of the scene of greater global technology, because of the speed of the ever rapidly changing technology industry.
So India was one of the top places we looked at. When it comes to software development, it’s a very mature industry because they’ve been doing it for three or four decades now. The entire world looks up to Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley actually looks up to India because of all the new stuff that’s coming from there and it is taking a huge role in that ecosystem as well. So, rather than jumping into Silicon Valley, we thought that it’s India that we need to harness the power from. This was the thinking behind why we decided to expand our footprint globally and also why we chose India.
Q: What is it about Indian software engineers that were appealing to Raksul rather than engineers in other countries?
Mr. Rajasekhar
Indian software talent is extremely versatile, quick to learn and highly adaptable. They can nimbly move across technologies, projects and products. And that’s partly because of our IT services background in our country, which is how it all started in India. And with product technology services and engineering services companies, you don’t work on a product for life, you keep changing every three months or six months, not just the projects, but the clients as well. Our versatility stems from that personality of unattachment.
Also, the Internet has brought the world so close together in the last decade and that has proliferated much more in India. If it’s a brand new technology, you have a better chance of getting people working on this technology in India than in other parts of the world because of the sheer volume. So the education, the talent, and the connectivity in the new Global Village, these are some of the reasons why companies set up shops in India.
If you need to transition any product, of any complexity, in any technology, our attitude is: Bring it on and we can work on it.
Q: How do you plan on instilling a high-trust work culture in the India center?
Mr. Izumi
In my view, it goes back to the idea of teamwork. One of the things that I pursue in this company and that I would appreciate in any company that I work in is working in teams.
Nowadays, a software company with a team of five people can change the world. We don’t need to have hundreds or thousands of people working in factories, we don’t need to have all these equipment and new capital investments to create things that change the world. It only takes a small team of people with different skills.
We’ve seen this happen in Silicon Valley garages right? You can have this innovation because especially with software, the scalability is such that you can create a service and launch on the internet and have people see it from all over the world in a matter of thirty minutes.
So this small team with strong bonds and chemistry can change the world. And that’s what I believe in and Raksul happens to have thirteen teams right now. A small team with a high level of trust and cohesion can produce amazing products that the whole world can access. That’s the type of thing that we like investing in and that’s the driver of our growth. That’s what we believe in.
Mr. Rajasekhar
It is Raksul’s special regard for talent in India. It is not about exploiting the supply of talent and skills at lower cost. It is about focusing on creating what is termed as intrinsic motivators at work. When I say intrinsic motivators, I’m talking about Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
Autonomy is about providing our employees with holistic things that they are empowered to own end-to-end, things on which they can exercise enough control to direct their own work and unlock their creativity and innovation.
Mastery is about giving them an opportunity to continuously improve themselves, master a relevant skill of their choice to contribute to the company and then move on to something else to master. People in the knowledge industry in India highly value personal growth and development. And by giving them the opportunity to gain mastery continuously fosters great trust.
Purpose is about how we connect every single work item that needs to be handled in India, with the larger purpose and the mission of the company, so that people find that connection with a purpose, find that connection with the impact that it’s going to have for the company.
We also realize that this demonstrates empathy in understanding that personal growth and development are very important for young talents in India, and our determination to encourage that here. This is how we can create an environment and a culture of mutual trust.
Q: How has COVID-19 impacted Raksul and how do you see Raksul’s vision of using technology and the Internet to transform the B2B industry in the post-COVID era?
Mr. Rajasekhar
Amidst all the somberness of suffering, loss of lives and paranoia this pandemic has caused in our world, we have witnessed some heartening positives: We have seen adaptation, resilience, sacrifice and steadfastness that many of us had never seen at this scale in our world.
The Indian IT industry has survived and thrived – the numbers speak for themselves, and digitalization in India has gone to the sixth gear. The IT companies have reimagined work, embraced remoteness and reoriented strategically. So has Raksul. Hiring top talents hasn’t become easier.
Raksul India started right in the middle of COVID-19 and has been set up from the ground up, to handle the pandemic and grow during it and post it.
We are ensuring that we have embraced all the tools, technologies and methodologies to address everything right from sourcing talents, onboarding, orienting, transitioning, executing and delivering! All this had to be reimagined and adapted.
Mr. Izumi
Our engineers in Japan have had very little to no impact, because we’re used to this way of working anyway. And even before COVID-19, many of them have already been working remotely and haven’t experienced a big impact from this.
Since we provide real-world products and services, it did have an impact on our company as a whole. However, many things are recovering very well. In terms of our future, it has brought up interesting questions about how people will work in the future. And one of the things that we promote is the digital transformation of these industries. All of those things that require paperwork or physical contact that you can actually do all from your mobile devices. That’s exactly what we promote. And it works even better in an environment where we are trying to practice social distance, move things to digital and online, and make things more efficient. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before people adopt more of what we offer. We have tremendous opportunities to make these transformations happen in those industries. So there are only opportunities that I see going forward.
We see that this COVID will be a great accelerator because people are more aware of what technology can bring to their business. We used to have customers who didn’t even use computers in their operations, only mobile devices, but all of the sudden with the COVID crisis, they began adopting digital technologies like crazy. They now are talking to us over Zoom, and they’re now using other digital tools. These are examples, but people are more aware of what technology can bring to their business. Now, when we go to them and say, “Here’s a web application you can use to make your business more efficient and profitable,” more people will listen to us and be open to the technology.
To summarize, it has improved how we bring the value proposition to users by making it easier for them to make this adoption possible.
Q: What is the purpose of Raksul India and what are its main objectives?
Mr. Rajasekhar
Based on my close interaction with the CEO, Mr. Matsumoto, I believe these are the primary purposes:
One, Raksul India will attract top talent and engage them with the best work environment, cutting-edge technology and purposeful work.
Two, Raksul India will enable the larger companies in every way, to scale them to the next levels of success by leveraging the talents and market in India.
Three, Raksul India will be the model for highly successful Japanese startups, in embracing globalization. We already have a Harvard business case study on Raksul for what they’ve done with digitalization. I would like us to be a success model for embracing globalization.
Q: What can India center contribute to the vision and mission of Raksul?
Mr. Rajasekhar
The most important thing is to help identify things within Raksul that need to be and can be done from India in a highly systematic manner but by thinking outside the box! None of this has been done before at Raksul and it would be all new. However, we in India have been doing this identification and transitioning for years and there is a lot of execution experience. There is a lot of opportunity within Raksul and we just need to identify them and match them with the talent in India for execution! We need to create a mission out of each impact area of work and let our talent in India connect with those missions. It’s not just about attracting and hiring top talent, it’s about retaining them by engaging them with extremely purposeful and mission-oriented work.
Q: What makes Raksul such a great company for software engineers in India to work for?
Mr. Rajasekhar
I chose Raksul because I was greatly impressed and inspired by the top leaders of the company that I met, such as Mr. Izumi and Mr. Matsumoto. They are visionaries and are genuine, down-to-earth and highly ambitious about India. I can only imagine the kind of culture such leaders would have created inside Raksul.
In my research and my discussions with the leadership of Raksul, I gathered that the mission statement of such a high-growth and successful company was also extremely genuine and the leaders themselves, and everything Raksul does is aligned with it – “Better Systems, Better World”, transforming conventional industries and improving lives and our world with technology.
I also understood from the leaders the intent behind Raksul’s expansion to India, and that was the deal maker! Raksul was coming to India to set up holistic and multi-dimensional product teams with end-to-end accountability and empowerment for highly impactful work, right from the first hires. This is so refreshingly different from the usual evolution of task-based engagement to project and module-based work to product-based ownership. That is a multi-year evolution. It was so refreshing to see Raksul wanting to do this right from the word go.
Q: What specific traits are you looking for in a potential employee for the India branch?
Mr. Rajasekhar
While we enable the intrinsic motivators autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we want folks who will be accountable for results and who highly value credibility, because it is your credibility that gets called into question if you cannot produce results. We want the kind of employees who take their accountability very seriously.
We also want people who are intellectually curious and creative. People who observe beyond the obvious and ask questions by thinking outside the box. People who push themselves beyond their comfort zone and thus push our company outside of our comfort zone.
Additionally, we seek team players who place the team’s needs ahead of their own.
We value people who are unabashed in their communication and openly express their thoughts and ideas.
Next, we need people who are passionate about software products, who have worked for product companies, and possess a strong product orientation.
Lastly, something that underpins everything – talent that has integrity. We want genuine people with the highest degree of integrity who do what they say and say what they do; People who we can completely trust with our company’s resources, commitments and future. These are some things that I look for.
Q: What is your plan for the near future and vision for long-term for Raksul’s India center?
Mr. Rajasekhar
Our first focus is to acquire and retain top talent. That’s fundamental. Now, if we cannot do that starting right away, there is no mid or long-term future.
Second, as we already touched upon, is to build a culture that our employees are proud of being associated with. This is going to create a virtuous cycle with our internal top talent becoming our brand ambassadors attracting external top talent.
The third focus area is to deliver immense value to the business every single day.
These are the three focus areas in the short term, as we put together a high-performance seed team which would create a solid proof-point to the headquarters by adding significant value to the business. We have done that a million times in India, but Raksul hasn’t done that yet. So that’s going to be my first priority.
In the midterm, I already talked about identifying various areas within the company where talent and execution are needed to give wings to ideas and take the business to the next level. We progressively bring such opportunities on, create missions, projects and then teams out of them in the India Center to execute several of these missions.
So the midterm plan is really to create multiple value delivery streams from the India Center. Now, of course, everything is not going to go well. Some things are going to go great, some things are not going to go great, but we will keep adjusting, failing, learning and improving!
The longer-term vision is to evolve the India center to be a true Center of Excellence research and development within Raksul. The wonderful inspiration that Mr. Matsumoto has given me and others would let us realize this long term vision with talent and scale.
Q: There’s been a few other companies that have opened branches in India and had success such as PayPal. What have you learned from their successes and maybe some of their failures as well as your experience in building Raksul in India?
Mr. Rajasekhar
There is a long and successful history of transitioning projects from outside of India into India. I spent well over a decade working in the US transitioning projects into India, China, and other places. In the last decade, I have worked in India doing the same. In my experience, one clear learning is not to be daunted by complexity. That’s very important because everything at first looks extremely complex to transition and execute. But if we approach it systematically, divide and conquer progressively with well-established execution tracks and good talent, nothing is too complex to move. Yes, I’ve witnessed highly complex projects and products move to India. It can be done, but we shouldn’t eliminate things just because it looks too complex.
Another learning is that leadership is nothing without the right talent. We must put everything into acquiring and retaining talent. It’s a war for talent out there, it’s not easy. Our target talent is probably just the top 2%. We may not need the other 98% for the kind of niche work that we do here. We are only playing for that 2% that every other company is vying for. So we must invest in being a preferred employer brand, invest in creating a work culture that talent wants to stay with and invest in creating the kind of work that top talent wants to work on.
We need to realize that if we find ourselves chasing numbers we have lost the plot. We need to be looking for the mission and the larger purpose to bring work into India for that’s what people intrinsically want to get connected to.
So these are some of the things that we have learned in setting up companies in India and we should definitely apply them in Raksul’s case.
