After quite a break, I got a chance to interact with an old friend, and an accomplished consultant-turned entrepreneur, Devendra Parulekar. Until 2016, Devendra was a well-known Cybersecurity consultant/expert and was leading the cyber and risk practices at EY in India. With a 16-years of rich experience, he hung up his corporate boots only to start something totally different, new, refreshing and what he calls, “satisfying.”
This was when SaffronStays was born. SaffronStays is a hospitality collective that has an inventory of well appointed, curated, beautiful, luxurious private home stays and villas. He spent nearly 10 years in planning this venture in a stealth mode before launching it. He even sacrificed many personal and family ambitions to save up for the venture. An otherwise hugely popular and successful consultant, and a well known figure in the domain of cybersecurity, Devendra took a massive risk and created something entirely different. He even laid his hands on coding, and went on to become the CTO of the company and made a commercially secure website to save the startup from any technology crunch.
While this could be a story of anyone who is foraying into entrepreneurship, the story of SaffronStays presents a distinct blend of a “born in the cloud” company yet keeping technology as one of the most silent ingredients in it and still keeping the experience top notch.
Listen in…