Vipul Swarup

Shaping a start-up with his global network

Not everyone can recognise an opportunity when they see one, but Vipul Swarup (BSE(Hons) 2004) certainly can. And that’s how he came to found EisenVault, a start-up near New Delhi where he now serves as Product Head.

After realising that medium-sized businesses in India weren’t getting good software or good service to digitise their documents and internal processes, Vipul jumped at the chance to fill the gap.

“Businesses are going digital worldwide and many governments are mandating the use of digital documents for various processes,” he explains. “EisenVault aims to help medium-sized businesses in India, and elsewhere, go digital and manage their documents in the Cloud.” Vipul hopes to expedite this by using machine learning to automatically categorise scanned documents.

Having worked across the US, the UK, Australia and India, Vipul has built a solid business network around the world. “I frequently leverage my global contacts. Our headquarters are in India. Our first chief technology officer was based in Australia. Our website was developed in London. And a friend sells for us in Singapore,” he says.

So why Monash? Vipul wanted a world-class education. The Australian economy was booming, with lots of opportunities. And he’d heard great things about the lifestyle here. “My eight years in Australia have been some of the best of my life,” he reflects.

In Vipul’s final year at uni, he did a software engineering internship at Deutsche Bank, where he had the chance to apply his programming skills to a real-world project. Upon graduating, he took a job at IBM implementing document management software for customers. Spurred by these achievements, he went on to complete a Master of Business Administration at the prestigious London Business School.

“This opened up a whole new world of opportunity,” he says of his time in London. “I gained exposure to a variety of professions, cultures and industries. Ultimately, I chose to return to the industry I liked best, the software industry.”

That’s when Vipul joined the business marketing team at Skype. And one thing led to another. Next he landed himself a management traineeship at LexisNexis. “There I discovered that product management is what I thoroughly enjoy, and where I excel.” And that’s what he has been doing ever since! At start-ups.

What lies behind Vipul’s success? “Good grades at uni and good performance at work count for a lot in your career progression,” he shares. “Don't lose focus and work hard on achieving your goals.” Sound advice that should resonate no matter what you hope to do.