The MBS alum behind a multi-million-dollar startup

James Baker and Siddhant Shrestha launched construction tech company Varicon from the classroom. Now they’re about to hit 100 customers.

James Baker always had an aspiration of getting into business which became the catalyst to do his Executive MBA.

He’d been working in construction for over a decade and was based in Tasmania when he took the plunge, flying back and forth for classes.

Sid Shrestha had been involved with family business and startups in Nepal for most of his life and always had dreams of studying abroad.

But then the 2015 earthquake hit Nepal.

“Everything was going pretty smoothly and then the earthquake happened which was a light bulb moment for me,” Sid said.

It motivated him to apply for a combined Full-time MBA and Master or Marketing degree in 2016.

“It was one of those life changing experiences that I had when I went through the program,” Sid said.

Finding connection in the MBS community

It was at Melbourne Business School these two worlds collided along with their other co-founder of Varicon, Ofer Assor (who’s since moved on from the company).

Varicon is a construction management software which solves multiple problems for customers, including connecting information that was previously duplicated across different systems, providing civil construction specific workflows and what they call making things “fat finger friendly”.

“That means actually making the tools easy to use for construction people on the job site,” James said.

He had the idea for Varicon in Don O’Sullivan’s marketing class when he was doing his EMBA and was looking for a co-founder at the time.

“I came from this product management and building background, and so we naturally connected on the idea” Sid said. 

At the start they were working full time while studying and a startup was a big undertaking.

“I remember one day, Don O'Sullivan, talking to us because we started off bootstrapped off the side of our desks, working full time, with some funds from some of our early customers,” James said.

“And he was telling us ‘guys this is not a part-time job’. I can tell you now Don, you were right.”

From the classroom to the global market

James described being a startup founder as like building a plane as you’re flying it.

At the start, business was slow with just a few customers including Peninsula Civil, one of their early customers, who remains a loyal customer today.

The hard work is paying off.

“We're almost at 100 customers now and almost at $2 million recurring revenue, which is a 200% increase on this time 12 months ago,” James said.

And they’re only just getting started.

Recently Sid had the opportunity to take the team to Nepal to see firsthand Varicon’s innovation hub in Kathmandu, a full-circle moment for Sid.

“Now, I can proudly say, we have a team of over 30 people working across product engineering, design and customer service, in Nepal,” Sid said.

“We're building this software that's going global and solving a big problem for the civil construction industry.

Sid, who’s now permanently based in Melbourne with his wife and young son, dreams Varicon will be a catalyst company for Nepal, elevating the Nepalese tech ecosystem and the IT community.

“I hope when I look back and we have hundreds of unicorns coming out of Nepal, we say Varicon was one of the pioneers of building amazing products used all over the world that we can be really proud of.”

Giving credibility to their entrepreneurial spirit

While it’s clear both James and Sid were born with an entrepreneurial spirit, they said coming to Melbourne Business School gave them the knowledge to turn that spirit into something tangible.

“What was definitely lacking for me was knowing how to do it and having the tools to take something from an idea into something that's real,” James said.

“As well as the knowledge the Executive MBA gives you, there's a network that enables me to now reach anyone in corporate Australia and that's almost as valuable as what I learned through the MBA program.”

If you’re feeling stuck in life and like there’s something more out there but you’re not sure what it is, Sid recommends doing an MBA.

“If you’re really trying to figure out what next and what do you really want to do in life, I think an MBA is a really good program for you.”

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