Inxero Boosts Local Startups with Google Docs, Gmail.

Anand Raj has always been a big believer in local business. Raj, who has been doing business in Austin since 2002, says Central Texas is a great environment for tech incubators working in a B2B environment. His company, InXero, is a member of The Austin Technology Incubator, which builds companies from early stage to profitability. This includes building management teams, forging partnerships and securing funding.

InXero has a cool little niche; it helps businesses showcase their products and services via social media and mobile channels. InXero's trademarked BusinessLive uses multimedia and user-generated content to drive new business and automate growth on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, G+ and mobile platforms.

"Marketing managers are trying very hard to combine all of their content into one story and to distribute that story across social networks, their website, to the partners that they work with," says Raj. "And there really was no easy way to manage that and to deal with that cost effectively."

"Using our cloud-based BusinessLive platform and applications, marketing managers can now bring all this content together, distribute that onto their websites, distribute that onto Facebook or mobile applications, all with one click."

All this marketing innovation and company-building means maintaining a reputable brand and being able to keep your team on mission. But before Raj was in a position to help build other companies, first he had to build InXero.

The Challenge: 

InXero is very much a Central Texas company, but it's a pretty big deal in India as well. The company has twice been named as one of the top 30 innovative technologies by the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program. TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a global nonprofit dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship, has called them one of the top early-stage startups. InXero was also named one of the 10 Internet companies to watch by SiliconIndia.

InXero is also supported by India's Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), which feels strongly that the BusinessLive technology will empower small businesses to grow and thrive on a global stage.

With teams in India and in the United States, Raj says a huge challenge for InXero was getting everyone to use the same collaboration systems. With some employees running Windows, others running Linux, and others still favoring Apple products (not to mention the people who prefer to work from their tablets or smartphones), it was challenging to get everyone on the same page.

"So the challenge was that sharing our stuff was often pretty painful," Raj says."We're a very creative company, but the ideas, sketches, videos and audio that we share back and forth globally were slowing everyone down."

The Solution:

Raj started using Google Apps and liked the cloud-based collaborative solutions they offered. But he found Coolhead Tech when he decided he needed a local business for a personal touch.

"I wanted a local reseller who could offer local support and ongoing management for our operations," Raj says. "Having a local partner lets us solve issues very quickly, and their expertise in integrating related applications has tied everything together to make our operations more attractive."

InXero uses Google Docs and Gmail primarily. He says Coolhead Tech has also offered expertise with solutions such as invoicing. Raj says his team plans to incorporate Google+ Hangouts in the future as well.

The Results:

"Since we migrated to Google Apps for Business, everything is nice and in one place," Raj says.

Raj says InXero's relationship with Coolhead Tech has allowed them to bring incredible results to more small businesses. He also says the savings Coolhead Tech offers (20 percent for Google Apps for Businesses versus purchasing directly from Google) has helped InXero keep costs down.

"Our expenses have to be lower for us to offer lower costs to our customers."

In the end, the InXero/Coolhead Tech partnership has allowed Raj's company to continue to flourish, in turn helping all of its client companies reap the benefits.

"The key problems we address affect small businesses in the B2B arena," Raj says. "We are now able to serve these small businesses and help these new technologies market themselves across mobile, traditional websites, social media and across all B2B outlets to capture those leads."