Seven Boats – Sail On It, Grow With It!

On a chilly rainy day, making a paper boat and seeing it sail through the small staggered water even if it remains only for a short time as water splits and rainbow rise was such pure bliss. How mysterious it is, a small boat can bring so much joy. There is one such person who didn’t stop in just making boats and sailing it through raining water, but a person who wanted to build real boats and watch is sailed through success as the rainbow was his vision. He is Debajyoti Banerjee, The Founder & CEO of Seven Boats Info-System Private Limited. Seven boats information system private limited offer best result-driven digital marketing solutions, search experience optimization, and other web-related services at an affordable price. They provide expert consultancy along with the right strategy, value for money guarantee with tailor-made services resulting in better return investment. They are quick to respond and are provide professional solutions. Being a premier digital marketing training institute in India, seven boat academy offer the best digital marketing courses in India. In India 2016, seven boats have been listed among the top 50 digital companies in India by Digital Monster Magazine. They have 1000 plus students and professionals in India and around the world through their digital marketing classroom training program, digital marketing workshops, and online courses. There are various open-source software, application and cost-effective market resources are available in front of our eyes, and seven boats Info-system helps your business by jotting those dots and making a solid robust internet marketing solutions, which is affordable and simple. Seven boats’ goal is to educate youth with the latest digital skills and provide them with the freedom to express their passion without any restrictions. They aim to bring the inner potential we didn’t even know we had. Seven boats hope to build a new generation of people filled with passion and enthusiasm that makes the world a better place. Seven boats are the key the young generation is desperately searching for.

Let’s see the full-length interview with “the man behind the boat”, Mr. Debajyoti Banerjee

Inventiva: What is the Name of Your Venture? Any specific reason for this name?
Debajyoti: The name of my organization is Seven Boats, having two separate wings. Seven Boats Info-System Private Limited is into Digital Marketing consultation & service. Seven Boats Academy is our education wing.
Seven Boats was formed in 2011. I started this venture with a motto of helping back the community with my acquired knowledge & experience in Digital Marketing and building a sustainable ecosystem where businesses & human resources can equally find benefits at low risk in this highly creative & complex strategic domain.
The number “7” in our brand name stands for seven colors of the rainbow, signifying creativity and a “Boat” is easier to manage than a large “Ship”. This signifies low risk. Together “7boats” stands for us stating “We provide multiple ways to promote a business with creativity at low risk” and we also train our students with this ideology of starting a career, remaining grounded.

Inventiva: Who is your target Audience/clients?
Debajyoti: For our Digital Marketing Service – Established business owners, Entrepreneurs, Startups in any industry
For our Academy – 10th standard student & higher, Working professional in any industry, Freelancer, Corporate house, Entrepreneur / Startup owner & their team.

Inventiva: Where is your venture based (city, state, country) & What are your geographical target areas?
Debajyoti: We are based in Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Our geographical target area is Global for both wings, service & academy

Inventiva: What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
Debajyoti: We bridge the gap between low awareness about digital marketing among business owners and high demand & interest in it by providing one-to-one customized digital marketing strategies and solutions to give a better return on investment. We have our in-house expert training program and extensive knowledge-base to help in learning the subject & minimizing the time required by a business house to realize the benefits. We also train people in the subject and help them professionally take this as a career option. This in a way contributes in resolving the problems of unemployment in the society.
We provide customized online advertising solutions, website consultation, digital marketing strategies & it’s implementation services to businesses across various industry verticals. We also provide Digital Marketing training.

Inventiva: Share the idea or story behind the venture. How did it come to existence? What motivated you to start your own venture?
Debajyoti: I started my career in New Delhi & Kolkata and worked there for a few companies for almost 6 years after my B.Tech in CSE & PGDM. During that phase from 2005 to 2011 and mostly in my stint with Nuberg Engineering Ltd, Alstom, Tisco, Compare Infobase (Maps of India), 123Greetings.com & FusionCharts as Revenue Engineer I was handling Sales, Marketing & Revenue Strategies. I saw and faced problem areas of other businesses and professionals through these and addressed the gaps directly. Digital Marketing came to me naturally as a passion to revolve the problems.
I have always had a strong passion to give back something to the community to create value for people. So, I strongly felt whatever I learned and experienced in my profession, I should share and implement those to create value for people for their benefits. That actually inspired me to start my own venture Seven Boats in Digital Marketing service & Education. When I started in 2011, these two areas were chaotic and people didn’t have much awareness about the wonders they can do with digital marketing. There were only a few companies at that time actually to provide structured digital marketing solutions to other companies. On the other hand, the right specialized resources to do this kind of job were difficult to find. I put my focus on the two verticals – Digital Marketing service to solve the marketing problems of other businesses and Digital Marketing training to create the right specialized workforce. So I started 7boats for bridging these gaps to create some good values for the businesses & career aspirants. I chose to take up the uncertain entrepreneurial route rather than doing easy jobs in some reputed companies. From the very beginning, my objective has been to create an ecosystem where businesses will recruit more skilled people and young professionals will learn a new skill and become more employable with the fastest-changing technological landscape. Also, entrepreneurship is more “giving” than “taking” and there is always a blissful satisfaction and happiness attached to it while facing many odds. At the end of the day, happiness matters.
Money comes in second place here. I focused on the problem areas of other businesses and professionals and tried to solve their problems in a better way and still trying.

Inventiva: Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
Debajyoti: There are some big players in the industry who were active before we started & a few new companies also. But we are unique in our own approach in the industry we are working in. We would rather like to compete with ourselves daily for progressive improvement and innovations.

Inventiva: How did you identify your co-founder? Tell us something about your co-founder/s
Debajyoti: We do not have any co-founder.

Inventiva: How did you hire your first team members? What skills do you want in your employees/team?
Debajyoti: The first team member I hired from a local reference from a local graphics design training center and then I personally trained and groomed them. Further, we hired a few by posting jobs in job posting sites and later we started recruiting from our own students.
We don’t always look for extraordinary talent, we look for people who can stick to the company, can positively contribute towards the company’s goal and timely finish their assigned work professionally maintaining the standard quality.
Soft skills –
Problem-solving, Team spirit & Leadership skills (People & relationship management), Analytical Skills, Clear Communication & Presentation skill (Listening, Writing & Speaking), Positive Energetic Mindset, Flexibility, Competitive aggression, Fast execution skill, Consistency, Perseverance, Empathy, Prioritization & Time management.

Technical/Business Skills –
Overview of how a business runs (Admin & HR, Accounts, Operation, Process, Project, Delivery, Sales & Marketing, Strategic Management, Customer Support, etc), Digital Marketing ( SEO, Social Media Marketing, Online Ads, Emails, SMS, WhatsApp, etc), Data Analytics/ Data Science, Web Development & Web Design, Digital Tools, AR, VR, Gamification, Mobile Apps Development, Cyber Security, AI Chatbot/AI, Robotics, IoT, Blockchain, Animation/VFX, Video editing, MIS (Excel/G Sheet), etc.

Inventiva: What expansion plans are you looking for in the next 2 years, next 5 years?
Debajyoti: We have an expansion plan as follows in the next 2-5 years. Opening new branches in India and making a few foreign alliances, increasing numbers of our training franchise partners, starting up our rural digital camp, improving our service & training delivery to a new height with new innovations, technologies & strategies. Our primary focus would be more satisfied customers, happy partners, students & team members.

Inventiva: Where do you want to see yourself in the next 10 years?
Debajyoti: We want to see ourselves as a 100-500 Cr company with a lot of contribution to society. In respect of Digital Marketing, we want Seven Boats to be a global brand.

Inventiva: What are your immediate goals over the next 1, 3, 6, and 12 months?
Debajyoti: In the next 1 year, we want to focus on expanding and excelling in our core expertise areas. We have a plan to globally take out our live instructor-led training and engage more and more people from versatile fields.

Inventiva: Have you raised any funding? Or have any plans for the funding?
Debajyoti: We haven’t raised any funding to date but surely have plans and looking for the right partner who apart from investing can also support our core philosophy.

Inventiva: What were the problems you faced during the starting days and how did you resolve them?
Debajyoti: Few rejections in the interview & my decision 9 years back to start up a company; I was sarcastically greeted by people asking so many questions. Have you set up a computer shop? Are you running a cybercafe? It’s an interesting journey full of ups & downs to see my company grow from ‘zero’ to where it is today. Bootstrapping is one of the most challenging components of the journey having basically no working capital. I have to take along every issue without any external funding. Right team building is the next challenge when you have to make a perfect balance of quality team, remuneration & company vision.
We are a loud & vocal online information provider. We focus on awareness build-up, customer acquisition & retention, often up-selling & cross-selling products as per their requirement. Retaining good resources is a challenge and so we do free training, workshop & awareness campaigns to nurture resources and keep them motivated.

Inventiva: What was the most challenging part of your journey till now? How did you overcome those challenges?
Debajyoti: This is a bit tough to specifically tell you anyone or two problems. The entrepreneurial journey itself is a roller coaster ride. Every day we have to face a lot of challenges and we find ways to overcome them. We have to be the problem solver at the end of the day. A calm mind & a positive attitude towards everything help a lot. Still, I can say building a great team is the challenging part at a start upstage. You have to devote a lot of time to build a great team that can work without you.

Inventiva: What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Debajyoti: I love driving, traveling, listening to music & watching movies also. There little non-working hours to spend but I spend time with family, go out in long drive, do fitness activities & study new things related to work.

Inventiva: Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?
Debajyoti: My mother is my biggest inspiration. Apart from that, I am very open to learning from anyone – a child or even anyone – that can be a ricksha wala, auto wala, tea stall owner, hawker, driver anyone. I talk, I read and I visualize various struggle stories of people and those give me inspiration & motivation to re-evaluate where I stand at the end of the day.

Inventiva: What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
Debajyoti: In one word, entrepreneurs work for “giving” something back to society while those who work for someone else mostly focus on monetary gains.

Inventiva: If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
Debajyoti: I would love to start with a product company in the same field of digital marketing but obviously not repeating past mistakes and surely applying my hard-learned experience so far.

Inventiva: How has been an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
Debajyoti: Frankly speaking, yes it affected me a lot at some stages earlier. Continuous work, deadlines, stress affected my mood & health. I could not give enough time to my family, friends at some stages. Gradually I learned to tackle these things in more positive ways keeping my mind calm and changing my perspective and priorities towards life. It’s a journey and not a destination and so we have to float. Work will be there, the pressure will be there, targets will be there but we should not lose precious moments of life also. Learning the balance is the key. It’s not that easy but yes can be achievable with practice, patience & self-introspection.

Inventiva: Anything, you would like to say to our readers or upcoming entrepreneurs?
Debajyoti: Few of my suggestions for budding entrepreneurs –
1.Stay Efficient & Relevant.
2.One way in which to grow your business is to maximize your operational efficiency.
3.Capitalize On Your Brand. Building a reputable and trustworthy brand can go a long way toward helping your business grow.
4.Keep Your Customers Happy & cross-sell/ upsell.
5.Connect With The Community.
6.Right decision making is important.
7.Leadership & building the right stable team are crucial factors.
8.Dream big and execute it in a bigger way.
9.Keep on doing what’s working and get out of what’s not working ASAP. Focus on recurring revenue streams.
10.Keep expenses low. Work on running cash flow.

Inventiva: Tell us something about your education & family background.
Debajyoti: I am from a simple Bengali middle-class family where my father was in officer rank in the service industry and now retired and my mother is a homemaker. I have an elder sister who is married and a homemaker. I am a B.Tech in computer science and engineering and a Postgraduate diploma in marketing management. My schooling was from Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Baranagar.

Inventiva: What is your USP which makes it unique & different from other start-ups in similar domains.
Debajyoti:
•We don’t work on only keywords for SEO, we have a 360-degree digital marketing approach focusing on leads, revenue, profit & ROI.
•Our services are very affordable & of good quality.
•We have extensive knowledge-base & free DIY resources.
•High on strategy and situation-based workable solutions for clients.
•Right Consultation & strategies, even out of the agreed scope of work that gives our clients a better comfort zone than any other competitor.
•We focus on the long term growth of our clients.
•Ethical & transparent work process.
•Small but Multi-tasking expert team that gives a competitive edge.
•Flat hierarchy & organization structure helps to act promptly.
•Well appreciated by many clients across the globe.

Inventiva: What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses & Start-ups today?
Debajyoti: Startups or small businesses fail for many reasons. Mostly within the first 1-2 years & others within 5 years. I can list a few reasons –
1.Thinking big without proper groundwork
2.Failure in assessing the demand for product/service
3.Lack of proper business knowledge & skill
4.Incompetency of team & leadership
5.Failure in managing finance
6.Overspending or loosely spending on unnecessary things
7.Rigidity to humbly accept feedback or fair criticism
8.Poor marketing/sales
9.Lack of awareness of customer’s need
10.No contingency/backup planning

Inventiva: Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
Debajyoti: My success measure is happiness, not money. I consider myself successful that way.

Inventiva: Please share complete name, address, phone number, email id & website of Your Business & Contact.
Name: Debajyoti Banerjee
Designation – Founder & CEO of Seven Boats Info-System Private Limited
Lead Trainer: Seven Boats Academy
Address: Unit 304, Diamond Arcade, Beside Diamond Plaza Mall near Nagerbazar, 1/72, Cal Jessore Road, Shyamnagar Bus Stop, Kolkata – 700055, West Bengal, India
Phone numbers: +91 8017049042
Business email id: [email protected] , [email protected]
Business websites: https://www.7boats.com / https://www.7boats.com/academy/