Gopal Krishnamurthy was an early BI and data analytics expert working for a large company when he left to start a BI consulting company called Visual BI in 2010. Visual BI grew to over 300 employees serving enterprise customers as an evangelist to push emerging Data & Analytics trends with SAP HANA, SAP Lumira, SAP Analytics Cloud, Snowflake, DBT, and Microsoft Power BI. They also created several add-on products, which Gopal and his partner Jay retained when he sold the Visual BI consulting company in 2021 to Atos.
Gopal and Jay now lead the growing team in Lumel, the leading provider of add-on products for the massive Microsoft Power BI ecosystem which was carved out from Visual BI. Lumel gets continuous growth funding with the proceeds of the sale of the services business, but the company is on track to be profitable by end of 2023 with almost 200 employees in the US and India. Lumel products (Inforiver, ValQ, and xViz) gaining momentum and adoption from numerous large enterprises worldwide, and their paying subscribers have crossed 2,000+ organizations already.
Gopal shares his transformational story of growing from technical employee to successful consulting company CEO to now product CEO. Gopal has been a pioneer in establishing the new software category of add-on solutions to existing BI platforms. He believes that in the coming years, customers will continue to gravitate towards consolidating and maximizing their cloud and BI investments vs. buying best-of-breed stand-alone software.
Best quote from Gopal:
“I’m very reluctant to raise VC funding because success for VCs is to invest X and realize 10X, and they would not be patient.
“If you build a software company to actually make a lot of money fast for VCs, that’s different than building a software company that actually touches people on a daily basis. They are very different in terms of what success means, and how it impacts employees, customers, founders, and investors.
“So I have learned the hard way that patience is a big part of building a sustainable product. In a product business, to build a product that is very, very foundationally strong, you have to be patient.”
In this episode, Gopal explains:
- How he grew a fast-growing consulting services business called Visual BI by serving large companies in the US using SAP software
- Why they started to build add-on products for the SAP Business Objects ecosystem, then invested in cloud-based add-on products for Microsoft PowerBI
- How they sold their consulting business to Atos in 2021 and kept their products to start Lumel
- How they are transitioning from a portfolio of point solution products to a family of integrated solutions for large enterprises
- Why Gopal doesn’t think VC investment makes sense for Lumel even as they grow faster with marketing efforts, despite his big and bold vision that wouldn’t be a good fit for “get big fast” VCs
Lumel Company Facts
- Founded: Lumel was officially created in 2021 when they sold the consulting services part of the business to focus on their products
- Description: Lumel is currently the largest provider of business intelligence and analytics add-on products in the Microsoft Power BI ecosystem
- Number of Employees: 180 employees, 10 in the US and 170 in India
- Funding: Self-funded by the founder from proceeds from selling Visual BI, their BI and analytics consulting services business in 2021
- Acquisition: Lumel is an independent, self-funded software company, but they sold their services business in 2021 to Altos
- HQ Location: Plano, Texas (Dallas area)
Links
- Gopal Krishnamurthy on Linkedin (CEO and co founder)
- Jay Anantharaman on LinkedIn (Co-founder and head of India operations)
- Lumel on Linkedin
- Lumel website
- Atos acquisition of Visual BI announcement
- Microsoft Power BI website
