This entrepreneur is crazy enough: he chooses to challenge Microsoft

Even in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs destroy everything, it is hard to find someone more ambitious than Milind GAdekar, CloudOn's top manager. He tried to use his own strategy and Microsoft's tools to defeat Microsoft, which was 500-bit in Fortune 34th. When Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya heard about CloudOn for the first time, the comment was: the Gadekar went crazy. Then we made an investment.

The specific content of this crazy plan is to get a Microsoft Office license and create a mobile version of Microsoft Office. At that time, Microsoft did not make much effort to push its products to mobile devices. Gadekar believes that this demand exists in the market. "Enterprises regard iPad as a consumption device rather than a production device," said Gadekar. "But people obviously still want to use Microsoft Office on their mobile devices ." (Microsoft launched a tablet computer Surface in 2012 to replace traditional laptops .)

On the first day of market orientation, CloudOn appeared on the Apple app Store list, attracting 100000 people to download it. (It has already reached 8 million times .) CloudOn's Microsoft app is completely legal, but executives at Microsoft are still shocked by its success. Executives contacted Gadekar on the first day of its launch. Gadekar said that CloudOn received several purchase quotations, even if the first version of the program was "pretty bad ".

Gadekar rejected them. After spending his career in ambitious companies such as @ HomeNetwork and Epinions, he wants to make the company bigger and stronger. Gadekar saw how strong the demand came from people who wanted to work on their own tablets and mobile phones.

With the Palihapitiya fund and Social + investment fund and others, the company spent $26.1 million in Gadekar.

Now, users of the new version can use gestures for editing. The new version takes into account the use of touch screen mobile devices in mobile environments, rather than simply copying desktop functions (such as drop-down menus ). CloudOn's text processor is compatible with Microsoft Word of PC, and can be integrated through cloud storage services (drivers) such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive. According to Gadekar, CloudOn will eventually integrate with the content management system and launch related software.

There is a very obvious question: Can Microsoft companies with a market value of up to $383 billion not uniform small companies like CloudOn? The answer is very obvious-"Of course ". But Gadekar does not believe that Microsoft's corporate culture can make it the dominant position in the mobile device field.

The biggest innovation in the field of software production comes from Google and its application suite. However, tool software such as Microsoft and Google still operates on a closed platform, which means they are not always compatible with the software produced by other companies. If the success of companies such as Dropbox in open software is a sign, Microsoft will eventually have to adapt to a world where it no longer controls everything. (The Microsoft Word iPad was rated 3 stars in the Apple App Store. CloudOn has four and a half stars .)

"Microsoft is fragile because we no longer live in a world with only one Windows system," said Gadekar. "The future of mobile devices is in iOS and Android systems. This is not controlled by the IT department, but by consumers ."

Large technology companies, including Dell, Lenovo, and HP, have realized the importance of mobile productivity. They can no longer only target Windows systems, but also need to match Google's Android system with Apple's iOS system. Storage companies are also involved. Box, Dropbox, and Amazon's AWS cloud service system have all showed interest in gaining a share of Microsoft's productivity empire.

"The Office software is not an unbreakable Castle," said Gadekar.

30% of CloudOn users are students, while the remaining 70% are composed of small and medium enterprises. Of course, CloudOn wants small businesses to pay for advanced features and ultimately develop powerful software that can be used by large enterprises. Large enterprises, including General Electric and Virgin Group, are already interested in the Enterprise Edition software, said Gadekar. If everything goes as planned, CloudOn will be able to raise more funds for R & D next year.

However, CloudOn has already faced a major challenge. Microsoft has launched more than 35 million downloads of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote for iPad. Among desktop computer users, 365 of Office users have exceeded one billion.

Gadekar said an executive of Microsoft once told him that "you have chosen to take an adventure in the deepest part of the ocean ." How does Gadekar respond? "A person only has one life ."

This entrepreneur is crazy enough: he chooses to challenge Microsoft