Sagar Vora isn’t one of those people who just lets things happen to them. At age 5, when the speakers of his new computer refused to work, he didn’t just sit around and wait for the adults to figure things out. He went through all the CDs he got with the computer, figured out what device drivers were and how to install them and “fixed” the speakers. At 16, when the internet speed at his hostel dropped frustratingly low, he spent all night tinkering with the router till he found the NVRAM, copied its contents to a file and pored over it to find the admin password and cut off internet access for everyone else. (And much like every other 16 year old who thinks they’ve outsmarted the adults, he was smug enough to proudly show off what he’d done.) In his twenties, he made a major detour in his career path and left chartered accountancy—which he was only one exam away from attaining—for coding. Lucky for him, all the twists and turns paid off, albeit not immediately.
He’d upended his career for a dream—to build software that made education accessible for everyone. “I strongly believe that education is the great equalizer. It’s the only thing that has the potential to break the poverty cycle and that’s what I wanted to dedicate my life to. It didn’t work out—maybe it’s circumstance, maybe I just wasn’t skilled enough then—but I don’t regret it. Everyone opposed my decision, but I was confident that I could build a career in IT, even if it’s entirely self-taught. That decision changed things for me. It made me believe that I could make choices that other people didn’t agree with and I’d still be fine.”
His confidence—which he has a lot of—wasn’t misplaced though. The first couple of years were tough, but he never said no to any work that came his way. He built websites for friends and family and even tried implementing an ERP system for his father’s business. “That’s how I came across ERPNext. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be willing to give away such a complex piece of software for free. My brother, Smit, and I set it up for my father, and each day, we’d be fixing issues and adding new features to make it better suit my father’s business. We ended up building something that we’re both proud of and show off to our clients even today. At the end, I decided to reach out to Frappe’s founder, Rushabh Mehta, and ask for a job.”
That chapter of Sagar’s life was very short-lived though. “I remember feeling incredibly intimidated all the time because everyone else seemed to know what they were doing whereas I was a trial-and-error guy. I didn’t know my fundamentals well enough and it was starting to show. And then Rushabh started asking me all these big questions about life and its purpose and it made me realize that I needed to take a minute to reevaluate my life. So I left that job just three months in.”
His tryst with ERPNext didn’t end there though. In 2018, he attended the ERPNext Conference to widen his network. When people started reaching out to him for work, he set up his company, Resilient Tech. “It wasn’t all easy though. After I’d left my job at Frappe, I spent a lot of time brushing up on the basics, but learning concepts and executing projects with them are not the same. So I failed and failed again. But somewhere along the way, I grew comfortable with that. I lost my fear of failure. I realized that if I just kept at it long enough, I’d come out the other end. By the time the pandemic started, I was working 14-15 hours a day and actually enjoying it.”
During this period, he was made Community Release Manager for ERPNext for a few months and also acted as a security consultant for Frappe. He also started exploring the ERPNext Discuss Forum, contributing wherever he could, until he discovered his niche while helping out his father’s business. Sagar, along with his chartered accountant brother, put his BCom degree to good use and built India Compliance, an app designed to make compliance with Indian rules and regulations swift and easy. “I hate how most apps these days are so focussed on increasing user engagement. Software is supposed to make our lives easier. Apps should be focused on making us spend as little time as possible on them, so you can focus on life outside these screens, and that’s what Smit bhai and I are trying to achieve with the India Compliance app. Whether it’s generating e-invoices or e-way bills or even just auto-filling your customers’ details using your GSTIN, India Compliance works to save your time.”
Whether it’s working in education or helping businesses, what Sagar cares about most is the impact he could create. There’s this quote by science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke that Sagar loves to share—any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. “That’s how I feel about coding. It’s easy to forget sometimes the effect that each pull request, each fix or feature can have. Just a few short lines of code have the potential to change so much for so many people. That’s the kind of magic that I want to create.”
