We recently connected with Seshu Madabushi and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Seshu thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

mKonnekt bring data driven marketing and AI trends to small mom and pop restaurants. We started the company in 2015 and have evolved over time as to how we were able to optimize customer engagement strategies using latest technology trends that is elusive to small business owners. We have done this with a mix of product and service strategies and have got successful results client after client.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2011, as a founder for a Groupon clone for Indian community in US, I worked with many mom & pop restaurants. Restaurant industry is the most competitive industry – fewer entry barriers, less differentiation and very resource intensive. During these years and till date, when most mom and pop restaurant owners start their business, marketing is an after thought and they would not even think about data. Most of them are very wary of marketing – as rightly because as the famous adage goes – 50% of marketing spend goes waste and the problem is finding out which 50%. So we want to bring data to the equation and bring down that wasteful spend with accountable marketing model.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For me entrepreneurship is a marathon and one has to sustain this journey physically and emotionally. There are number of times where I was elated because we signed a new contract and rode the roller coaster down because we lost a client. Rather than talking about resilience in business world – I would like a story about how I started my running adventure. I was in Paris (70 km away in a town called Fontainebleau) doing my MBA at INSEAD – I used to live with my flat mates – a Belgian, a Russian and a Spaniard. This town is beautiful with forests/trees and lots of fields – this was in 2007. I started running as a ruse to explore the town and this has grown into a habit – since then I have been running multiple half marathons and full marathons.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I am a big believer of bootstrapping – when I started mKonnekt, I knew in 2015 itself that I wanted to build a product company. I wanted to be a one stop shop for restaurant’s marketing needs. At that time after closing desisauda, I wanted to start a marketing company which helps mom and pop restaurants – I remember the day I walked into an India restaurant – I shared the idea of 4Q approach with the owner.. I told him that he would be the first client. He signed up with me and that is how mKonnekt has started (he is still my client). I have bootstrapped the company and has built the software with services and looking back I would say that this is a feat that I am proud of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mKonnekt.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mkonnekt/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/mKonnekt