We started NFN Labs, a mobile app development studio in 2011 to develop world class apps. We had an investment of few lakhs, an idea for execution. And here, we had to make a choice of either taking funding or taking the time-tested approach of developing products for our customers. We chose the latter.

Mobile app development as an industry had existed before we entered the market. We knew for a fact that we were a late entrant in an already crowded market. Hence, we decided to make our design driven approach to development our USP. A process where design is given utmost priority be it our customers products or our own ideas. This approach helped us to generate real cash and profits from day one.

Clear with the understanding and our approach. We trained our guns on the next two steps, acquiring customers and adding members to our family (team). We took a disciplined approach to associate ourselves with individuals who shared our vision.

A question that often people ask us is why not take the funding route?

It’s a general perception that when you bootstrap, your growth could be slow, it’s a perception that timelines for growth is very lucid and there are every chance that goal can be missed or readjusted by the founders. Funding when done puts the organisation in a trajectory for growth instantaneously and since there is always a person or a team to push (by way of asking uncomfortable questions) you will have to show progress and satisfy the interested parties. Funding comes with the multiple decision makers or shall I say too many cooks? Though we wanted to be contemporary in executing the business our bank balance always reminded us to be orthodox in execution.

If someone had said in 5 years you will move from 800 sq.ft. apartment to 2500 sq.ft. commercial place in the heart of Chennai; from a member strength of 2 to 30; with zero debt, we would have accepted it with both hands. And exactly that’s what happened. During this journey we have developed some of the chart topping and award winning applications, been featured on major international and national sites and magazines and to top it all — we are not answerable to anyone but ourselves. Answerable to growth. Our growth has been completely based on internal accruals. Starting off with two Mac Mini’s on day one for our iOS team to moving to MacBook Pros for all members and perks that were on par with the options offered by funded companies. {P.S. — We are Hiring}

Now looking back, we are proud of the decisions we took with multiple checkpoints to defy lethargy. For some of them it may look like poor growth, but we strongly feel its better to be a growing self funded company than to be a failed funded enterprise. In terms of growth we see an arithmetic progression than a geometric progression but we are well aware of each upward trend and that’s good enough reason to come it to work every single day and make sure it’s always pointing North.