Raveesh Dewan: 09:29
Yeah. I would say let me share a small journey with you. We started as a workflow automation engine, if you will. So we created the orchestration and we wanted to be our guiding principle as we want to be highly visual in doing what we are doing now. And I will bring the story home, because this is what the interesting unfolding of what we were thinking and what I brought in came in together. Right. So if you look at we started as a workflow engine and then because we were highly visual, we wanted to create the whole experience as visual experience, drag and drop visibility, which brought in the complexity. Now we being open source is highly pluggable architecture, which means you can create components and weave that into your framework. Then came the AI era, wherein I prompt and generate the app.
The idea that we had was we wanted to do it all visually. We want to bring it all together. And what we did leverage with AI is none of our nowhere in our platform. It generates code. It generates the construct that converts it into an application at runtime. Right? So we enable this whole concept called vibe composition with our platform. And if you look at how it works now using JNI, you can generate the application and you can also edit it visually after that. So think about their vibe coding platforms like pencil, cursor and all great for, you know, fast coding. But then on the other hand, there are vibe composition or vibe coding platforms, which you prompt and create code. We are right in the middle. Generate the application and edit by, not by coding, but rather by visual editing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:24
And that’s that for a second, you know, you know, maybe go over the difference there because like people like we hear vibe coding, right? Basically like, hey, you’re just talking and like telling, you know, the application what to do, right? Hey, you know, people don’t know what vibe coding is. Like, hey, create me a website that blah blah, blah, blah, blah, create this ERP system that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I need to do this, this, this, this, this, and then it magically, you know. I’m not saying it works out of the gate or anything, but it gets you started. So talk about the differences, vibe composition versus vibe coding. Yeah.
Raveesh Dewan: 12:00
So you’re absolutely right. You know, the vibe coding starts with, I want to create something and, you know, a system magically does create something for you, right? The problem is sustainability, right? Governance. When I have created something and I’m going to put that in production and real data is going to go through that, I want to make sure that it’s governed right. I want to make sure that it’s security taken care of. I want to make sure that it follows my guardrails of the enterprise. Right? I can build all those guardrails, but that’s what it’s all about, right? That’s, that’s what it is all about. Vibe composition. We have built that guardrail for you. Now, whatever you create in it is going to remain within that guardrail.
And transitioning is significantly important as well. In large enterprises. So I built this application. Can it be maintained? Can it be monitored? All that is built in, into our, you know, platform. That’s what vibe composition is. That’s how we are defining vibe composition. You are not creating from scratch. You are composing the validated components, right? You know, within our platform to get the outcome that you’re looking for. Right? And I will not get into a situation where I have created this using vibing, if you will, but then I really have to learn the code behind it to change it. You can visually edit our platform. So that makes it significantly different from a user experience standpoint.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:28
So that, you know, services based large services companies, they wanted to build a flexible ERP system. What are some other examples of what people have built?
Raveesh Dewan: 13:40
Yeah, I’ll give you another example that is really close to my heart. Jeremy, this is a CRI. This is the Cancer Research Institute of Malaysia, and it’s not for profit. And they wanted to build. Oh, sorry. Not cry. It’s a Hospice in Malaysia, one of the largest hospice in Malaysia. And they’re not for profit. And they wanted to deploy technology. Right. All their nurses were carrying paper, literally paper for the medical record because they used to get a call, and they needed to have that record and quickly run through the record to help them. What they found was, if these people are living with their families, their life expectancy grows by almost five years, right? And they needed a system wherein they can manage all this electronic medical record.
Very expensive. They did not need all the bells and whistles and frills. They said we want something targeted to us. Obviously, we have a tech for humanity program, so we extended a special pricing for them. What? When I went there, what the CEO shared touched my heart. They said, we are saving lives with Joget. Right now, when the nurse gets a call, all she does is login to her iPad, pulls the record and is able to know exactly how I need to deal with this, you know, episode of A patient. That means a lot for us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:15
It’s really interesting. There’s a lot of use cases, ERP. They used it to kind of digitize. They don’t have to use paper. Let’s go back to the beginning for a second.
How did you even get involved? I know you were you know, you studied as an engineer. You, you know, worked for some large companies nationwide, Blue Cross, Blue Shield. How did you originally come across Joget?
Raveesh Dewan: 15:43
So interesting story. Obviously, I actually have been even prior to. You know, back when I was in college, I had a startup at the time as well. So I, I had a startup earlier, learned a lot of lessons. You’re doing that startup. Then I had a chance to work in a large SI, which is now our customer as well. Interesting enough. And then I had a chance to work in highly regulated industry insurance industry. Right. Talk about PNC health care, so on and so forth. A lot of experience in owning the applications in production, what it means when it goes down, right. And now on the fourth side of the table. So you get started as a small open source, right? And I’m very, I would say, tech savvy, interested in open source, how we can make difference from open source standpoint. I found this beautiful small team that is.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:45
I’m curious real quick on the open source side. What is the business model originally? Right. Because open source, they’re not charging for it. Right?
Raveesh Dewan: 16:58
It depends. Generally there are two types of models. One is open source and completely open source. And you charge a support fee for that. The other one is like us, we are open source, but there is an enterprise version that is licensed because all the enterprises need, you know, a different level of support in very simple terms. I, if I compare this, you know, think about how you can go drink water from a natural spring water, but when it comes to bottled water is what you would prefer. Is it what?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:35
I don’t want to get sick. I prefer not.
Raveesh Dewan: 17:40
So that’s that’s a simple analogy.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:44
That should be like if you want open source, you may get sick, but the enterprise version, you’re safe.
Raveesh Dewan: 17:50
So that’s that’s that’s so our, our.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:55
Way of putting.
Raveesh Dewan: 17:55
It is the enterprise version for enterprises because they need proper support. They need immediate support, you know, when it goes south.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:05
Right. So it’s open source. You just, you know, what happens next.
Raveesh Dewan: 18:10
So, you know, as I mentioned, we started as an open source. I got fascinated with the team, and started advising. And next thing is I believed in so much so that me and some of my partners were on board members. When you were opening up the website and we got together and we have spent a good amount of time in the industry, we figured out, you know, we can take this, you know. Really big. And that’s when we started, you know, kind of bought the company and started building the company.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:48
What was that conversation like? Right? Because you were advising and buying into the company?
Raveesh Dewan: 18:55
Yeah. Let me share a story. It’s an interesting story. When we were on the final stretch in the conversations, I met the, you know, one of the angel investors and initial founder. And Christian. And it was like a final conversation with him, along with another angel investor, Juan, who is a partner now as well. Both, both are still there as partners, right? And my final conversation with Christian was in New York, and I was driving from here first. I got a ticket, you know, speeding ticket second. I took a wrong turn, and he had a flight to catch. Third, I was, you know, kind of stressed. I bought a sandwich and I thought, I’ll just eat while driving because I’m getting late. The next thing I’m wearing a white t-shirt. And next thing is the whole, you know, ketchup is on my t-shirt.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:01
You’re like, this is a sign from God, I should not do the deal or what? Okay.
Raveesh Dewan: 20:05
And I’m not kidding. And I see him. I had to go directly straight to the meeting because I had no choice. Otherwise he would have missed the flight. So I went into that final conversation and he shared already like, what happened? I said, that’s a topic for another Let’s talk. What do you need to get? So that’s how it was like in very simple terms.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:32
And you did you bring in it sounded like maybe there were a couple partners that you brought in to buy in at the time.
Raveesh Dewan: 20:39
Yes, yes. So we myself and Parminder and we have worked together earlier and, in the same industry as healthcare. And we saw the potential we know what healthcare spends as dollars. I’ll give you a very simple example. The cost of healthcare has been doubling every 6 to 7 years. Right. And there is a real need to, you know, bend the cost curve in healthcare. I’m sure if you’re looking at insurance policies of healthcare, it’s extremely expensive these days. It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s unbelievable in very simple terms, right? And the idea was, how can we bring that cost down? That’s what prompted us, you know, to look at open sources and how we can. And, you know, one thing led to another. And here we are, you know, talking about, you know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:33
You get so when you came on as CEO, what were some of the first things you made sure to do or were the biggest initiatives for you?
Raveesh Dewan: 21:46
I think there are three things I would say. One was, how can we be enterprise ready? Right. We see the potential. We see where it can go. Can we take it to the enterprise level and have some real customers who are paying? We had a smaller ticket, you know, pricing at the time. But today when I look at some of our customers, right, they are doing some extremely mission critical applications and that matters to us, right? So the intent was We have spent time in the industry.
We know what it takes to own these applications in production. And I’ll just give you a very simple example. Healthcare, delayed. We have to process it within 24 hours. If the. There is a delay. Every day you pay fine, right? So the intent was how can we get there? That’s the kind of mission critical application that we want. We should be able to build with it because a lot of people have this wrong notion about drag and drop. You can only build simple applications. Absolutely not. That’s the myth that we wanted to break. And that’s that’s the mission that we were on.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:00
Was there a certain milestone customer that you remember getting early on that you were especially proud of? Because when you look at the website you’ve had, you have some incredible logos on there, but I imagine it wasn’t always like that way, you know? It wasn’t always that way.
Raveesh Dewan: 23:20
So I would say, I don’t want to say one or the other customer. Every single customer in every single point has been critical to us. So it’s not that one customer or another customer. I really would love to thank, you know, a company like telco, Telkom Indonesia that really believed in us, right?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:42
How did they find someone like that? Find you? It seems so random. How did they start using you in the first place? Because I know you have, I think Bank Indonesia, you have several regional things there, but how did they find you?
Raveesh Dewan: 23:57
Yeah. Any of the companies that found us was not true. We don’t do, you know, too much ads. We are kind of I would say a quiet company if you will. So when they try to find out or let me put it when they were trying to solve a problem in Telekom Indonesia example. They found us. They want to look for open source. You know a platform that can build applications, but it should run on containers like OpenShift or Kubernetes. When you put these three four things together and say and be enterprise grade, that’s how they found us, right?
Another example, and some of these customers, like example, blue didn’t even ask for training. They researched our product and just just went with it. Right. And ever since they have been growing over time. So there are various customers. I would say every single stage has been critical to us because every single customer matters, whether it’s small or big, it doesn’t matter. Their business is impacted by our platform and that’s what matters to us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:06
Do you find that some of the companies start playing around with the open source and then they realize we need kind of more of an enterprise version. Or do they typically come in with, we know we need to get to the next level and they come in with the enterprise version.
Raveesh Dewan: 25:24
I would say there are both the scenarios now. I mean, we have established a really good ground across the globe. Right. But there are two, two scenarios. One is they will not talk to anyone. They would research. I remember one of the German companies, they came in and they said, we want to buy by a platform. But before we do that, can you review what we have built? Right. And they were not aware that they were using a community edition, which has limited features. And they said, we want to buy. We said, what you have already is free. You want to buy an enterprise. And they were shocked.
Oh, we didn’t know about all these features as well. Right. And then there are other others who have experimented. They know they are. They are very, very informed, you know, sophisticated buyers. They know I want an enterprise edition and I want this, this, this. And does your platform do this? You know, these things become very targeted. They know what problem they’re solving in very simple terms. And they are the best customers because they know our platform. They know the limitations, they know the capabilities, and they accept, you know, this is the state that we want to go in.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:39
What I found interesting is that I’m going to pull up your website. If you’re listening to audio, there’s a video version. You have a marketplace, right? So there’s some off the shelf. You can look at the latest apps, latest plugins, top downloads, but there’s some off the shelf, there’s AI expenses, claim app, invoice flow app, AI budget request, evaluator app. There’s a bunch of apps here. Talk about the decision. Do I know if this was on the site from the beginning or this feature of the marketplace?
Raveesh Dewan: 27:14
No, actually it has been from the beginning. Jeremy, the reason why this is there is there are a lot of assets on, on the marketplace which are absolutely free to our customers. Two things. One, we want something of value to, you know, to be provided to the customer. So we keep rolling out new applications that you can, you know, download and just start using and start modifying. It saves time. It saves time to structure these things, right? You can very quickly start deploying these and, you know, go live. These are applications that you can get started with very quickly, right? So yeah, you can see, I mean, you want to invoice applications.
You can quickly get started, you know, so on and so forth, especially for mid-tier customers who are already struggling with the amount of resources they can deploy. Can I get this done faster? I have a business outcome that I need to achieve. How can I get there faster? That’s what this does. And login is something plugin is something, a smaller capability or that is built outside the core platform, but enables you with a new feature in our platform. So we keep releasing those things on our marketplace, absolutely free of cost. Now we are trying to monetize this by virtue of extending this to our partners. Our partners are releasing solutions on our marketplace. So that’s what is in progress now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:43
So people may have like four different softwares or applications they’re using currently that they’re paying subscriptions for or something like that. They can go on show me like, listen, I can replace my invoice software or whatever it is and build it and kind of integrate it into whatever other systems through what you’ve provided. Is that accurate?
Raveesh Dewan: 29:09
Yeah, yeah. Actually, let me give you a real underlying scenario. Jeremy, what we are finding is a lot of companies have signed up five, ten, 20 different types of SaaS for what they are doing. And there is an invariable need for bringing the data together for various reasons. And now, especially with AI, it is that much important now. And second thing is they sign up these, you know, SaaS and they the data lies there, right? And now everywhere, I’m begging my data to be brought in.
You get one thing that we have done is you deploy on prem and you, your. This power is going to be on your own. So when they see that and they start building these various apps, and we have made it significantly easy for an app to talk to another app, it becomes really interesting to build all these apps that can talk to each other. And now when I want to throw AI at it within Joget. I can do that very fast. I can build an agent that can pull data from another application seamlessly within it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:14
I’m wondering who’s a good fit to use Joget. And I just want before you answer that, I want to encourage people. You can go to Joget actually, and there’s a marketplace, and I just encourage people to check it out because you can just see what’s possible, even that you may not have thought of. Right? Because I’m in the marketplace here and I can click on AI agents and I see what stuff is being created, right?
That I may not have thought of actually. AI candidate screener app. There’s an AI budget request evaluator app, there’s an AI complaints management app, there’s an AI contract review app. So some of these things may just give you ideas of what you know what? I am not even automating or creating or using AI actually. So who’s a good fit to come on the platform and start using it? Or certain size companies or types of companies?
Raveesh Dewan: 31:16
Well, actually, Jeremy, I would say we have various government agencies as our customers. We have fortune 500 companies as our customer and the companies that are really, really leveraging our platform by building multiple applications are these, you know, I would say mid to large tier companies who are between maybe 200 million to $2 billion big. They really go ballistic on the platform. There are customers who have built 200 applications, all sorts of applications that they’re running on their, you know, for their business. So, you know, that they and obviously, as we are growing, we are finding large customers are coming now building, as I mentioned, about telco, a really large system that they have built on our platform.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:05
Yeah. I’m looking at some of these tools, like I’m in the office tools here. I imagine companies use Slack or something like that. And so you can see there’s a messaging app, a simple message. You can easily chat with a user within your organization. So I imagine people could kind of explore what’s been created. And it’s kind of a plug and play situation.
Raveesh Dewan: 32:26
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And the good thing is you can download this and edit it as you need.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:33
Yeah. There’s a simple CRM here. There’s a sales management app here. Quotation. So there’s some really interesting applications here.
Raveesh Dewan: 32:45
You know what we’re doing with the marketplace is just sharing the art of possible. Yeah. Right. Because every app that customer is building a custom app for their environments, for their business scenario. But a lot of times the customer does not. They may not be aware. Oh, these are the other things that can be done in Joget, right? From a business standpoint. And that’s what our intent with this marketplace is. Show them the art of possible.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:15
I’m wondering on the marketing front, you said like, you know, you don’t really do traditional marketing or ads. How do you spread the word quicker?
Raveesh Dewan: 33:25
You know, the best thing is open source. The idea is community. They find they start contributing. And the next thing is, you know, it’s word of mouth. A lot of times a happy customer is a great, you know, referral, right? So some of our customers who have used Joget they have implemented it and then they left the job and they went to another company and they wanted to replicate the success that they got with a joke.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:57
Yeah. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to encourage people to check out joget.com. You can see it’s on you know, we’ve been showing it on the screen. The last question is more on some of your favorite resources. Okay, those resources could be some of your favorite books, business or otherwise. It could be mentors, right? Like personal or even distant, like just people that you’ve learned from at a distance, whether reading about them. What are some of your favorite resources, whether it’s books, mentors, and maybe some of the things you’ve learned from those?
Raveesh Dewan: 34:43
Jeremy. A lot of mentors. So I can’t give one name. You know, quite frankly, one of my mentors that I always, you know, you know, I would say is my dad, you know, he’s been I’ve seen him in tough times. How do you survive those tough times, right? When your business is booming and it goes completely zero and, you know, uplifting. You know, I’ve seen him, you know, the resilience in him that inspires me every day. And then obviously, you know, my partners, like my team members who are there, they inspire me every day as well. Some of my, I would say some of the other people who I know find it difficult to take those names, if you will, because the journey is so, so much so that you learn every moment. Right? But yes, every, every. You know, every meaningful integration in interaction I have had with anyone, I’ve learned something.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:58
So what’s an example of your what? You saw your dad from a resilience perspective?
Raveesh Dewan: 36:07
Back when I was in school, he had a really good business and that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:12
This was in India.
Raveesh Dewan: 36:14
This was in India. And that business went to zero because of some regulation. And he had to, you know, start, you know, from scratch in very simple terms. And, you know, we have a big family to feed. And, and, you know, observing him, how he survived being resilient, you know, that’s, that’s something that I never forget during tough times. That’s what, you know, inspires me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:53
Did you know you were going to move to the States at some point?
Raveesh Dewan: 36:57
At the time, I had no idea. No. Brutally honest. No idea. I was in school. I went to college. Luckily, I joined Infosys and a great company where I learned a lot of discipline around this whole application development. And, and guess what? Then, you know, and I’m here, you know, by virtue of them sending me to a customer site and next thing you know, you are here, you know, forever.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:32
You mentioned I’m sure you know, you mentioned your dad, you mentioned some of the board members here. I don’t know if there’s a specific piece of advice or learnings from you mentioned by Maynard and some of the others. Anything sticks out for you on something that they shared with you along the way?
Raveesh Dewan: 37:58
I would say a lot of things, you know, like Maynard or, you know, talking about strategy, talking about, again, resilience, you know, while, you know, building the companies. I would say, you know, like Jack and Julian as well, they’ve been there since day one. And, you know, Joe has seen its peaks and valleys and, and I’m sure we’ll continue to see that, see whichever stage we are in. Right. But sticking to the guns and making sure that we do what we say and walk the walk. And that’s critical to us. And that’s what I’ve learned. And not just from them. A lot of other team members have stuck, you know, with us for a very long time. You saw Adam, you know, he’s actually retiring and really appreciate how they have, you know, single handedly managed stuff.
Right. Great. You know, some of the team members who really started from scratch with our company as just an intern, and now they’re super contributors, if you will, Justin and Derek. And, and, you know, our team lead, which is. Some of the folks, you know, Alex really helped us think through how we should position the company. And Anoop and Shweta are really leading the charge, if you will. And now with the customers, really, really, you know, talented folks. You go over Julian and they are like, you know, they have been in the founding team as founders and, you know, talk about, you know, a 12 year journey and they are still there, you know, with the same energy and focus. That’s amazing. Can I ask for more? Absolutely not.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:09
First of all, I want to thank you. Thanks for sharing the journey and some of the lessons along the way. Everyone could check out Joget.com and to learn more and more episodes of the podcast. And we’ll see everyone next time. Raveesh, thanks so much.
Raveesh Dewan: 40:24
Thank you so much, Jeremy.
