Tegile founder: Will we IPO? Yes. And we're NOT another NetApp

IPO coming?

WtH: Alright, let’s settle on that. What are you envisioning for the coming time; is an IPO the goal for Tegile?

Rohit Khetrapal: It absolutely is. To us it is about building the organisation so that it is ready for IPO. The timing depends on growth – which we do in a very effective manner. We have grown over 350 per cent and are well on our way. How long the road will be, whether it is 18 months or 24 months depends on our sustained growth and how the market is at that time.

WtH: Your VC mix is quite specific, with WD and SanDisk as strategic investors on board.

Rohit Khetrapal: We have a good mix I believe. On the one hand we have traditional investors in the mix like August Capital, who has invested in Splunk before and Meritech Capital, who were behind Fusion-io and Facebook.

We balance that with strategic partners like Western Digital/Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. We are able to define the workload requirements for SSDs with them very clearly. In essence, we do not only get a higher quality SSD from them, we also get the best performance out of an SSD in the market place. So it is not just about the money with them. The biggest part of what we are about is quality. If you put cheap disk and cheap SSD in it, you are trying to beat down the laws of physics and that does not work.

WtH: How large is Tegile right now, how many people work for you?

Rohit Khetrapal: Right now we are 170 people and growing very substantially right now in sales, channel and marketing.

WtH: Are there new geographical areas where you are focusing?

Rohit Khetrapal: Today we are very focused both on the US and EMEA, towards the middle part of the year you will see us focus on Asia and Australia. The growth in both the US and EMEA has been going extremely well.

WtH: You are 170 people and growing. How would you define Tegile’s culture and how do you maintain it?

Rohit Khetrapal: The first essential element of our culture is passion. People that go for startups are definitely go-getters. They could have had a cushy job elsewhere easily, but for them it is about having passion for what they do every day. So we have to liven up that passion.

Once you have the individual's passion, the work effort and the tenacity keeps coming.

The second element is creating value for the customer. Customer satisfaction is not enough, it is about real customer gratification. In our selection process we look closely for new employees that are going to take care of our customers.

Every system in the world has problems, that is never going to change. It is about how you handle those problems that is essential. Our job is to take care of our customer, this is a big part of or culture.

The third part is really employee fairness. If you are good to your employees, then you can expect them to take care of your customers. ®