Meet Saravana Kumar, Founder Of Kovai.co AI Startup Who Rewarded 140 Employees With $1.62 Mn Bonus

An artificial intelligence (AI) startup based in Coimbatore has given a bonus of $1.62 million (approximately Rs 14 crore) to 140 of its employees.  Kovai.co, which offers business-to-business SaaS solutions, paid the bonus for fulfilling its founder Saravana Kumar’s promise to his employees.  Saravana Kumar had promised to pay his employees a bonus of half their gross salary for staying with the company for three years

Saravana Kumar founded the company in his hometown Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, back in 2011 after quitting his IT job. The company is now based out of both London and Coimbatore. 

"I was a regular IT worker for over a decade. But I found a gap in the market and decided to set up this startup. It is completely bootstrapped and we have no external funding," Saravanakumar told NDTV Profit over the phone from London. 

Here’s All You Need To Know About Saravana Kumar, The Founder Of Kovai.co.

A native of Mettupalayam in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, Saravana Kumar started his career as an IT professional. After graduating from Bharathidasan University in Tiruchirapalli with an MCA degree, he joined a company called Nuva Systems as a software engineer in Coimbatore.

The 48-year-old’s big break came in 2003 when he joined Microsoft UK as an Integration Architect, being posted in London. For the next 10 years, he focussed on one product named BizTalk.

He worked as a BizTalk consultant for various top firms in the world like Accenture, Fidelity and Microsoft. During his stint at Microsoft, Saravana Kumar found some gaps in the product.

The techie, passionate about coding and building new products, started to build his product to address the gaps that BizTalk had. In 2011, after a Microsoft conference in Seattle, he launched a product named BizTalk360.

The journey of Kovai.co began in 2011 with a single product. Since then, the company has grown and expanded with two new core product offerings named Turbo 360 and Document 360.

Kovai.co is now valued at over $100 million and makes $15 million in revenue annually. 

Saravana Kumar lives in London with his wife and two kids, while his parents still live in Coimbatore. He visits India regularly. 

Apart from his love for technology, Saravana Kumar is known among his employees for his passion for cars. He told NDTV Profit that he even has a roadmap of what cars he wants to buy as Kovai.co hits new milestones.