The story of Goa’s Fernandez brothers, Aaron, Judah and Caleb, the fiery, energetic neurons behind ‘Kilowott’, a truly global IT company headquartered in Goa, is one that needs celebration. The three young men from Saligao have made their mark in the IT world through sheer diligence, industry and the ability to envision and tap opportunities. The trio also holds a valuable lesson for budding entrepreneurs. If you truly believe that the world is your oyster, it won’t take you long to weave a string of pearls
Goa’s beaches have known to inspire poets, writers, artists galore over ages.
In the case of Aaron Fernandez, the sands of Goa’s beaches appear to have inspired a sense of entrepreneurship, which have formed the roots of ‘Kilowott’ , the state’s first and only IT company, which provides end-to-end solutions across a wide spectrum of technology-related services.
In brief, what Walmart is to the American consumer, Kilowott – promoted by Aaron, his brothers Judah and Caleb – is to a tech consumer. A digital strategy, design and development agency, Kilowott has the capability of offering 360 degree digital transformation services to clients across geographical markets. Today, the company can craft memorable customer experiences through innovative product architecture, digital engineering and user-focused design.
But, Kilowott’s journey to where the company stands right now, spread over three continents, is rooted in the sands of Goa’s beaches, where co-founder Aaron walked about as part of his first ever job in 2002.
17-year-old Aaron was on a summer break from high school when he signed up for a gig, which involved distributing flyers along Goa’s gold coast – the Sinquerim-Baga beach stretch – to promote a restaurant. His pay-check at the time was just INR 1,000 a week. It wasn’t a cushy job by any means, but it was an opportunity to earn some pocket money. And Rs. 1000 in the early 2000s was still a princely sum for a young student.
The stint implanted an idea in young Aaron’s mind. The ‘flyer distributor’ decided to scale up a trajectory, Aaron would soon familiarise himself in his journey as an entrepreneur years later.
He took up the responsibility to become a coordinator for the flyer delivery service, getting his friends and colleagues from college to sign up as flyer distributors.
Soon, more coastal restaurants and clubs joined his client portfolio. Aaron scaled up again. This time he started a small design firm, which would design flyers, which his team would distribute. What followed was a cutting-edge event aggregator website, called ‘Pablo’, which collated a comprehensive and a constantly updated listing of events in Goa.
Despite its advantages, the project didn’t take flight. Clients were not familiar with online advertising and SEO was unheard of. The concept was ahead of its time and didn’t find takers. Though his first website failed, the learnings from it were immense.
All these developments were just the early pit stops in his entrepreneurship journey for the co-founder of Kilowott, before Judah and Caleb joined in.
Even though Aaron’s beginnings as an entrepreneur were humble, for a class backbencher, his vision stretched far, far ahead, quite in sync with a phrase he had heard somewhere, early in life.
“I had heard of a phrase which went this way. ‘Front-benchers make good employees, while backbenchers make good employers’. It panned out that way in real life too,” says Aaron.
After college, he migrated to Norway, where he took up a job with a design company. He cloaked his entrepreneurial ambitions for the time being. It was a new country, a new culture and a new work environment. It took getting used to. What struck him most, was the unique Scandinavian knack for incorporating an element of finesse which is often associated with their philosophy of life.
Before long, the entrepreneur in him rose to the fore, as he utilised the skills he had picked up in Goa to the benefit of his Norwegian employer, a retail company. Before long Aaron set up an e-commerce division and moved the product stores online which saw a steep hike in revenues.
“I was already familiar with website development. I helped my employer with business innovation and helped the firm start an online store, after which the company’s sales shot up. Soon, I got more involved in the company’s online promotion campaigns,” Aaron said. The success in e-commerce led to him being head-hunted into the second largest equestrian e-commerce outfit in the world Horze.com.
But building a successful business isn’t just about gliding through the good times. You need to ride out the bad phases too.
When pink slips were handed to several employees, including Aaron, amid a cost-cutting drive, it was Aaron’s business wit, which helped him change track in time and put him on a fast track of entrepreneurism.
It was a classic illustration of turning adversity into advantage and Aaron dug deep. It was time to put his shoulder to the proverbial plough.
“I was caught in a bind. I wanted to start my own company, but at the same time, I also wanted money to sustain myself. So, I took up a job at a large media company and at the same time also signed up as a working partner at a design agency,” he says.
The design firm began offering a series of innovative products – thanks to Aaron, who wanted to scale up its operations. But the agency was unable to see the big picture. By then Aaron had spotted an opportunity. He was convinced about starting a company in India. He parted ways with the firm and forged ahead along with the support of his brothers Judah and Caleb.
The media company he was employed with at the time, as part of his day job, had a large requirement of design and development chores. Aaron stepped in and pitched them design services by outsourcing them from India, which was already a world renowned BPO market. The plan worked.
In 2014, Caleb, Aaron’s youngest brother moved to the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai, after a stint in Norway, where they set up ‘Kodework’, a website development firm, primarily to execute work outsourced from Norway.
Caleb had graduated in BCom from St. Xavier’s College in Mapusa and took charge of the company’s back-end operations like administration, finance, taxation, legal & compliance aspects.
The brothers also laid out long-term targets spread over a span of three years.
If all went well and they achieved their goals they saw themselves taking a trip to Hawaii and sipping cocktails while lounging on a beach bed at one of the Polynesian beach islands in the US state. It was a worthy incentive!
“At the end of three years we had succeeded in achieving the goals we had set out for ourselves. We didn’t end up going to Hawaii though. We went to a spa and resort in Norway and stayed there for three straight days while we planned the roadmap for the next few years. We did have a round of cocktails after those three gruelling days,” Caleb recalls.
‘Kodework’ took off to a slow start.
Business Processes Outsourcing is not just about executing jobs at competitive rates in another corner of the world. It also involves understanding the cultural sensitivities and work ethic of a foreign region. Amid sorting out such transcontinental idiosyncrasies, Aaron’s other brother Judah too joined in and soon the Fernandez brothers took a call to move to Goa, their home, to set up base. Judah loved tinkering with machines, something he picked up while spending time with his grandfather in their garage while he was a young boy. He ran his own cycle repair workshop at the age of 13 which was the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey.
They moved their outfit to Goa in 2015, where they started off with just two employees.
Judah’s responsibilities were to put together a team of coders and ensure quality control and timely delivery systems. And he was also responsible for moulding a cool vibe to their vibrant new venture – Nordic Intent.
“Some quotient of informality was already brought in by the early crew members like Jared, who walked in with his dreadlocks and other team members who wore a pair of shorts every now and then. When I noticed that appearances mattered little when it came to their delivery of targets, I pushed for an informal space for the team, where work culture is kick-ass and parties are epic,” Judah says.
If Judah defined the vibe, Caleb developed a fondness for brick-mortar-furniture stuff during the setting up of the company’s new office at the PDA colony in Porvorim, North Goa.
“Over the years the one thing I have discovered about myself is a keen interest in designing indoor spaces. We recently built and designed our new office space in Porvorim. I was involved in every aspect right from drawing up the blueprints to picking furniture and designing every corner of the office space. It is spread over 700 square metres and is beautifully designed. We are coming up with another office space which is still under construction,” says Caleb.
And then things started taking off for the Fernandez brothers. From Norway, the business spilled out to other parts of Europe, so did their bouquet of companies.
“As business grew in Norway and other parts of Europe, so did the companies in our stable. ‘NineStack’ was started as an app development agency. ‘Creometric’, our digital marketing agency, now works with several brands in Europe and India. ‘Bootcamp’ was born to mentor and train raw young talent, which was otherwise a scarce resource. Companies like ‘FatHamsterStudio’ an animation and virtual reality studio, ‘Ticlet’ and ‘Negative Studio’ were also brought onboard, which eventually led to the creation of ‘Nordic Intent’, a start-up accelerator, in 2018. The companies today have partner deals in Norway, Netherlands, India, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the US,” Judah informs.
Then came the cataclysmic year, 2020. The accompanying ravaging winds of the pandemic blew across the globe and changed the way we look at life itself. The world witnessed the emergence of the phrase ‘new normal’ and global processes had to adapt, so did the team.
“2020 witnessed sweeping changes across the globe. Humanity is still adapting to a ‘new normal’. We at ‘Nordic Intent’ embraced that change. We have now streamlined and consolidated some of our offerings into a single entity – ‘Kilowott’. It seems like a big change. However, our core philosophy stays the same – to offer cutting-edge digital solutions in a global marketplace to enhance digital customer experience,” says Aaron.
All these tech labels have now realigned as Kilowott, which now has more than 150 employees on its payroll spread across three continents collaborating with various government and international agencies and Fortune 500 companies, while also fostering a close association with the Norwegian diplomatic mission in India. Till date, the Fernandez brothers and their company have executed more than 2,000 projects globally.
“We are a high performing, cohesive team with strong leadership. We collaborate with organisations and often construct combined teams with our clients to help drive transformations from within. We believe that great brands have the power to change lives, ignite the imagination, affect culture and generate behaviour,” says Judah.
The company uses leverage design elements such as CX, AR, VR and next-gen technologies such as analytics, AI, IoT to craft seamless digital interfaces and operations to positively impact customers’ business growth and profitability.
Kilowott offers consultancy and strategy services in customer journey mapping, customer experience process assessment and surveys consulting, assessment, roadmap ideation and modelling with use cases, brand positioning and go-to market strategy, brand identity development and concept design and prototyping. All the strategies are custom – made based on real data analysis, down to the minutest detail generated through innovating coding.
“Kilowott builds interactive experiences and implements goal-oriented disruption by combining strategic vision, product innovation and design, emerging technologies and superior digital marketing. Simply put, we are a digital strategy, design and development agency,” says Caleb, adding that the company is clued into disruptive digital technologies, outcome-driven philosophy and an imaginative approach.
“We work closely with our clients to build customer experiences across all platforms and brand touch points. Working across platforms, disciplines and industries, our approach is based on a deep understanding of the interplay between design, technology and the needs of our clients,” says Judah adding that Kilowott’s vision is to blend digital and design seamlessly to craft enduring digital user experiences that have a direct impact on customers’ business outcomes.
Clear communication, with service and product positioning are two of the key mantras of success in trade, which Kilowott maintains.
“Clients often come to us for marketing services, but tend to have disorganized product and service offerings, with an unclear value proposition. If you aren’t clearly communicating the benefits of your products and services, you are losing sales and revenue. If you don’t have clear product or service positioning with successful differentiation, a large percentage of potential customers will choose your competitors over you. Don’t make that mistake,” advises Aaron.
Speaking about the business forecast of the future and acknowledging the changes witnessed in markets globally, says Aaron, “There is a significant uptick in the quantum of interest in brands wanting to expand their digital presence across geographies. We see an opportunity and have realigned our strategy to meet the needs of the global business community”.
While Goa will continue to be a strong base for the company, talent from across regions is coming onboard Kilowott.
In the past months Kilowott has brought onboard Nitish Raikar who will drive operations and profitability. An alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur, Nitish has an experience spanning two decades in the IT industry, having worked in IBM, Infosys and Mindtree among other companies.
Spearheaded by a strong leadership team, Kilowott is poised to achieve its goal of being a global tech powerhouse while being rooted in Goan soil.
Looking back at the incredible journey over the past six years, says Caleb, “The ethics and morals imbibed by our parents Donald and Jessyl Fernandez from childhood is what held us in good stead while we built this company from the ground up.” He adds, “Our brother Aaron has been a huge mentor to all of us. He has held us all together and encouraged us to do our very best. As brothers we keep our egos away and come clean to the table.”
For the Fernandez brothers, bigger challenges lie ahead. One of them is transforming Kilowott into a 500+ employee company, something the company’s COO Nitish Raikar, formerly associated with Infosys and IBM, is helping them inch towards.
But the good news is that Goa, their home, will continue to be the headquarters for the global operation
