Aneesh Varma: How we turned around our internet flop

After failing to find a buyer for their data transfer software, Aneesh Varma and Manav Gupta - founders of FabriQate - tweaked their product to meet the demands of retailers for social media type platforms. Since then, the concept has proven popular with big brandnames and investors.

In IT, the line between the right and wrong product can be very fine. In 2008, Aneesh Varma and old school friend Manav Gupta "were sure that the mobile internet was going to take off". They wanted to develop a program that would transfer digital content between PCs, laptops and phones. Varma quit his job with investment bank JP Morgan in London and Gupta quit his post with Hewlett Packard in China. They used their combined savings of £100,000 to contract software engineers and office space in China. "Between his technology contacts in China and my business contacts in London we had a great combination," says Varma. However, they also had the wrong product.

After just five months they realised "we couldn't make a product that could handle all of the data and was simple to use. Also the companies we visited were not convinced that their customers would want to use it." Disheartened, the pair pulled the plug and pondered what to do with "a good team of engineers and important contacts with big companies".

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.