DeskAway has been selected as a Top 20 business application for November 2010 by GetApp.com, the business software search engine.

The GetApp.com Top 20 Business Apps ranking is based on a composite algorithm that incorporates several criteria, including listing popularity on GetApp.com, number of reviews and comments, social media presence such as Twitter and FaceBook followers, volume and quality of integration points, and input from analyst reports. The ranking is updated monthly. You can view the ranking online at GetApp.com Top 20 Business Apps.

Here is my first article for the Business Insider. It is on why we chose SaaS (after I moved back from the U.S.) and the 5 things I learnt from my experiences in the last few years.

India is known as the land of outsourcing, so, when I landed here in 2005 to start a software company I was inundated with service and outsourcing  companies all around me - pretty much providing the same web design and  development services and fighting to retain employees. This is something I didn’t want to be a part of. In fact, seeing the dependency on people and the consequent issues that it creates, made me want to have a company that was system-driven, that had the right processes in place to  make it a dynamic, scalable, light and transparent organization, while providing value to others.

I turned to what I believe is the future of computing: Software as a Service (SaaS). Now, I often look back and try to re-learn from my experiences….

Read the 5 lessons…

A quick video showing how you can edit your documents by using the different writing styles (from Tinymce editor)  in your DeskAway account…

We will try to cater to all support requests but due to our national Diwali festival our support time might be slower than usual. Any questions related to billing/account management will be resolved on Monday Nov. 8th, 2010.

Diwali is the festival of lights - we light lamps (diyas), visit relatives, feast and display fireworks.  It is something similar to the week of Christmas.

Have a great weekend!

In my recent interview with K. Venkatesh of YourStory.in, I spoke about how I got started,  my journey, marketing SaaS in India, my new book and the challenges I faced in terms of customer acquisition, hiring etc. to get DeskAway off the ground.

Like most youth from India, I left for the US in 1998 in search for a business degree. Along the way, I bumped into a few dozen courses in computer science, and realized that it was my calling. With business acumen, and sound technical background, it wasn’t long before I joined the founding team of an entrepreneurship society in my university, hobnobbing with like-minded individuals, investors and spending a good deal of time around incubators.

Through college and post-graduation, I held multiple jobs in various verticals and industries (see details below) determined to get a feel of many business types, as I knew I would soon start my own Internet business. During the post-9/11 economic crunch, I survived on freelance jobs until I could land on my feet. In 2002, I co-started a web design and development consultancy with my wife, which I ran while holding down a full-time job in an e-healthcare firm. Our consultancy, after a bumpy start, began taking off and we had large publicly traded companies on our retainer in 3 years.

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