An extremely savvy investor and an equally astute marketer, Romi Mahajan has invested in a number of niche and interesting companies. Express Computer spoke with Romi Mahajan, to understand some of his recent bets
What is your latest bet?
I am still working with many excellent companies like Socedo, GAEMS, and others; I’ve added a very interesting, hyper-growth company to my focus- TimeXtender Group, a Denmark and US-based company that is defining the Data Warehouse Automation Category (DWA).
Can you tell us more about TimeXtender?
TimeXtender is an incredibly interesting company that in some ways defines the newly burgeoning “Data Warehouse Automation” space. Our ultimate quest is to automate the Data Warehouse to enable business users to get data at their fingertips while not harassing IT and having to predefine data models and hand-code every change. We at once liberate IT and enable the business users, which ends the internecine conflict between the hungry Business and the fatigued IT department and allows us to have our cake and eat it too. Based in both the Seattle area and in Aarhus, Denmark, we are growing logarithmically and partnering with Qlik to fundamentally change the world of Data and Data Warehousing.
Does it mean relooking at traditional models for data?
I’ve been writing about this issue for a decade. We have to move beyond “culture” and “perception” and understand that as long as we look at traditional models for data and traditional (and manual processes) the gap between IT and business, never collapses it only widens. Our CEO Heine Krog Iversen built the company with this “Why?” in mind and when I heard this, I said “sign me up!”
So DWA? Is that a known category?
DWA will be known. We are working with the industry’s top analysts and they are agreeing with us. Our notion is that when there is a “name” for a category people start saying “Wow, I’ve been in pain a long time, now there is a cure~!” We didn’t know how to manage headaches well until we knew of a thing with the name “aspirin?” So one day DWA will be our aspirin! Of course I am being playful but we believe DWA will be a Billion dollar category and we’re betting the farm on it!
Who do you compete with?
If we define the space, we’ll all do well. What we compete with is the CIOs and IT teams who just go along and say “this is life.” What in India we call “Chalta Hai” attitudes. There is truly a way to build a Modern Data Warehouse and start querying it in under an hour. As I said we are in the enablement and salvation business and we love both sides of this!
Any plans for India?
In fact, India is one of our core growth geographies. With scores of Qlik partners in the country (based mostly it appears in Mumbai and Bangalore), we believe we have a very clear market penetration strategy. We already have a few partnership agreements in place but expect to be in India in a big way by Q3 of the Calendar Year.