A serial entrepreneur driven by curiosity and passion, Roopak thrives on converting ideas into products that make a difference. Though he’s founded successful ventures, he’s most energized by empowering others – mentoring startups and advising entrepreneurs. Roopak holds an MBA from Columbia, where he honed his knack for innovation.

A team player who leads with humility, he leverages his expertise in generational AI to create seamless user experiences. Roopak believes in building technology that brings people together, enabling authentic connections. His vision and values make collaborating with him as rewarding as the solutions they build.

Key Moments

[04:05] Technology tapping into connections, follow-up confusion.

[06:34] Meeting locations tagged for easy reference.

[12:28] Late 1980s. Designed own Roomba in 1998.

[13:37] Big companies offered patent for money, costly.

[17:53] Achieve goals, validate assumptions, cross finish line.

Find Roopak Online

https://mtap.io

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roopak-gupta/

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Transcript provided by CastMagic.io

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneur’s Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, so the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneur’s Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast.

Seth [00:00:34]:

I am as always your hostess with Host with the most Seth, today I have Roopak Gupta. He is the chief bottle washer, the head honcho, The brains behind mtap.i0, which is a business card networking. I’ll I’ll have him explain it. It it is a business card on steroids, essentially, is what it is. You walk around. You can tap your card to build phones, exchange data. It’s really neat. He’s also the CEO of Heurotech, which is helps startups get build out their products and their MVPs and all that.

Seth [00:01:11]:

He’s a serial entrepreneur, and he has got an MBA from Columbia, and he’s also helping out with with their startups over there. He believes building technology that brings people together, enables authentic connections. How’s it going, buddy? Maybe maybe you can explain, give it a little bit more pizzazz about MTAP a little bit. Because I I kinda feel like a business card on steroids, which it is, but it’s more than that.

Roopak [00:01:38]:

It is. Definitely. Yes. So you put it set. So first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast.

Seth [00:01:43]:

It’s I love it. Yeah.

Roopak [00:01:46]:

And, It is so wonderful to know you and all the things you do. So thank you for everything, Seth, that you do. And My

Seth [00:01:52]:

head’s pulling up. My head’s getting big. My head’s getting big.

Roopak [00:01:55]:

So you bring everyone together, and that’s what MTAP also does. But before I tell about MTAP, right, I’ll ask I’ll tell you a story of how it was born.

Seth [00:02:04]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:02:05]:

So it was born from a pain and from a trigger. So but pain was not the trigger. So my pain was meeting people And so many of them. And when you come back doing that follow-up, either it won’t happen, and if it happens, it happens to about 20 or 30% of the people because either the business card paper cards were lost or they were lost in my contact form. So there was not a proper way of how I can reach out to our people after every networking event. And during COVID, especially, lot of people were reaching out over the phone And over Zoom. So all of a sudden, what you have to share changed. The medium changed, and that was a problem.

Roopak [00:02:49]:

But the trigger of MTAP happened when I was just cleaning up my desk and I was throwing out lot of paper out of it. And those paper was coming from my visits from conferences and all the pamphlets and the goodies that you have that you see. And my daughter, she, Ria, she is a big enthusiast around environment. And she’s like, dad, you are into digital technologies. Why don’t you just figure out a way That we don’t have to print and throw all of this paper.

Seth [00:03:17]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:03:18]:

And that was the trigger to actually start thinking of a solution To reduce paper, and that thought emerged as magic marketing.

Seth [00:03:29]:

I love it.

Roopak [00:03:29]:

Which later on was renamed and rebranded to MTAP Magic Tap.

Seth [00:03:35]:

Yeah. I love it. It’s it’s magic it’s magical. I mean, people see this and they’re like, It’s just like when when you used to be able to tap your phone and people are, like, woah, tap your phone and and pay for something. That’s now kinda been become ubiquitous. Now soon enough, these business cards that are you tap to give people information are gonna be ubiquitous. And so what sets MTAP apart from all the other plethora of Instagram esque tap cards.

Roopak [00:04:02]:

Yep.

Seth [00:04:03]:

Because they’re all over the damn place.

Roopak [00:04:05]:

It’s all over the place. Right? So you will find so many technologies that are just tapping it and putting it through. And that’s where the key Difference between a contact and the connections came up. So when I was trying to go around and I was tapping it out, I still realized that I have not resolved my very basic problem of doing the follow ups because I still had to do those follow ups. I still had to go in And do all of those activities. Yeah. And I was not sure. And then

Seth [00:04:34]:

you had to find the damn contact information in the process too.

Roopak [00:04:37]:

Yeah. So we were losing a lot of contact information. So how do you resolve that? And then we came back and used my knowledge on the software industry side to actually create a software Of doing connections. And then I started calling up people in sales, people in retail, Coaches that what are their problems in managing, doing the follow ups, and making converting a contact into connections?

Seth [00:05:06]:

That’s wild.

Roopak [00:05:06]:

In sales, everyone said you have to have 6 touch points before a contact will be able becomes a connection and gets with you and knows you. Can we enable that using the new technology? And that was the quest I was after, for the last 16 months.

Seth [00:05:24]:

It’s only been 15 months. I know. It’s kinda wild. Yeah. It’s flown by. And

Roopak [00:05:29]:

and, what led to it now, as of today, You can actually enter a contact information in MTAP hub, and, MTAP hub is gonna send out a email. If for example, if I add you, it will send out a email. Yeah. So till today, the you will be receiving the email, And you will have no control. As of today, you can actually review the email that is being sent out

Seth [00:05:55]:

I just hooked it up before our call. I just hooked it up.

Roopak [00:06:00]:

So now you can actually review the email, and you are gonna get it. You can also have shared notes. So if I add notes about you, you will receive those notes too?

Seth [00:06:11]:

Oh, so don’t don’t call a guy a schmuck, in the notes because he’ll see it.

Roopak [00:06:15]:

Absolutely. And you can have personal notes. You can tag a contact.

Seth [00:06:20]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:06:20]:

Yes. And then you can actually tag a contact, segregate them. When I was talking to people and giving out talks, I realized a lot of small business owners don’t have the concept of segmenting the context that they are meeting.

Seth [00:06:34]:

Mhmm. And by group, does it met them at or where they met them at, locations? I mean, I’d love that because I can actually go back and say, oh, I met these guys on I met these guys. They used my MTAP card. I’ve been met them at this event. I can go back and tag them, you know, the tags come through, it’s great.

Roopak [00:06:49]:

So that way, you have a memory, the other person has a memory. So what happens now? The follow ups are happening even before I sit down the next day to write someone. Because now the other person has a text message and an email with your information, more than likely, they will get back to you if there was some, common interest.

Seth [00:07:10]:

Or they’ll say, hey, it was good meeting you too, and you know you got the right email address.

Roopak [00:07:14]:

Yes.

Seth [00:07:15]:

At least you get that Yeah. Actually, I I’ve seen that when I use your card that, people well, at least right, yeah, I agree with you too. Yeah.

Roopak [00:07:24]:

Yeah. And then came up, A feedback, because we are very big at collecting feedback. People started asking. The email that goes out from mtap@mtab.io, Can it go out through my own personal email?

Seth [00:07:40]:

I love

Roopak [00:07:40]:

it. And we said, okay. We went on that quest, And now we are integrated with Google to work as I

Seth [00:07:48]:

love it. That’s that’s what I did this morning. I integrated. I have to play with it now, but, you know.

Roopak [00:07:53]:

So now, all the in whenever you, either scan a paper card or you enter your contact manually, you will be able to get a email generated from your own personal email account.

Seth [00:08:07]:

Which means it’s more personal. It It doesn’t get stuck in spam boxes as much, and it’s like It’s

Roopak [00:08:12]:

more deliverability, more personalization, and that’s what differentiates us. It is Yeah. It is not the product. It’s the process.

Seth [00:08:20]:

They’re dime a dozen. They’re they’re is really, what it is is it’s a NFC chip on a piece of paper or a piece of metal that has contact information on it. Oh, and there’s a QR code that has the information. It’s a v card, essentially. Not special. It’s the sauce that goes around the basic stuff.

Roopak [00:08:38]:

And the constant striving To make sure that it is the best solution for you, and it becomes your personal connection point, hub where all your contacts are there.

Seth [00:08:50]:

I love it. And Yeah. It’s fantastic. You know, you’re going to Salesforce and Zoho. I know you’re working on Zapier at some point. So

Roopak [00:08:58]:

Yes. Not only those integration sets, what we are working towards is we are trying to make it give you as much Productivity as we can. So when I am meeting with people, I want to make sure that if they give me their contact information, Today, only the bigger enterprises can get the lead enrichment.

Seth [00:09:20]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:09:20]:

So if you’re If you receive just the name and the email of a person, in about January of 2024, we are releasing a Feature where you can buy it for $10 a month as a add on, and every contact that you add, We will give their LinkedIn profile, which business they belong to, what are their skills, and

Seth [00:09:46]:

You’ll fill in stuff.

Roopak [00:09:46]:

You will have all that information in your system, which usually only bigger enterprise have.

Seth [00:09:53]:

Yeah. Which makes sense. The bigger enterprises need it first. They’re gonna break it and tell you what you need to fix it for. Get it done that way, then it releases the wild. Makes perfect sense. And for $10 a month, it’s not bad at all.

Roopak [00:10:05]:

And So but we are introducing many AIs. The as a road map, we are also coming up with a matchmaking. I have more than 5,000 contacts in my system.

Seth [00:10:15]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:10:16]:

How do you prioritize those contacts? When I was doing one of the leadership professors, I think Paul Ingram mentioned it out Yeah. That Every end of the year, you should go and create curate the context which are more important for you for the next year based on where what the outlook is. Mhmm. And you should Follow them and grow with them. I’m bringing that concept in our tool so that all of us can use it without knowing the concept.

Seth [00:10:43]:

I love it. I think it’s fantastic. So let’s go back to 2 let’s go back to the so the whole thing is you went to college in India, Then you can then you came into the you know, over in America. Well, you worked over there for a while at some corporations, and you came over America. You worked with some more comp corporations. You So up here at Tech, you also work with Johnson and Johnson. You mean, you’ve been inside the big dogs, been inside the smaller dogs, Poor dogs. But the idea is that, like, you’ve done the corporate grind.

Seth [00:11:15]:

And Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. And you’ve and you’re oh, yeah. Like, you know, it’s, you know, it’s a grind. I mean, it’s like whose butt do you kiss on what day exactly?

Roopak [00:11:23]:

It’s a different grind. I’ll say whether you talk of a corporate grind or you talk of a Tata, both are trying. But Yeah. What do you want? It depends on person. My wife, she loves the corporate structure. She thrives in that. She’s in Microsoft, and she just cannot understand why are you in a start up and Literally grinding yourself for 18 hours a day with all the stress not knowing when the paycheck is coming. But that’s exactly what I had to decide last year, Whether to lose lose my whether to give up my corporate job and lose all the security the financial Security tech is happening after

Seth [00:12:03]:

more than anyhow. So it’s like, what are you keep putting up with, you know?

Roopak [00:12:07]:

Yeah. And then going to a roller coaster ride. But I have been a person who likes to create things.

Seth [00:12:14]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:12:15]:

I build my 1st robot, not the robot, but actual robot, and it’s the standard way back in mid of 19 eighties.

Seth [00:12:26]:

Oh.

Roopak [00:12:28]:

Late 19 eighties. And then when we were not even aware about Roombas of the world, I had designed my own Roomba in 1998, 99. And one of the factors that made me form Eureka is What I learned, and I’m still getting my goosebumps because I lost a lot by learning, and my biggest experience was learning. So this goes back to year 1992,000 when I was in the last years of my engineering college. I had clear developed a form on which you can keep your big vacuum cleaners, and actually it will clean your house. It will know where the chairs are. It will know where the rugs are, And it will adjust the section accordingly. Oh, wow.

Roopak [00:13:16]:

At that point of time, the concept of startups was not there. No. So the concept of funding was not there, and, the concept was, especially in India, if you prove to it, You build the final product, only then anything will happen.

Seth [00:13:32]:

Oh, wow. We’re gonna take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show.

Roopak [00:13:37]:

I was told by a couple of folks That, big companies, they will give the work on giving me the patent about it if I do x, y, and z. And x, y, and z during that time in Indian rupees was costing me about 2 lakhs to 3 lakhs. And Wow. Understand, I come from a background where I had been brought up by my grandparents. I had lost my parents at a very early age. So finance was not that much available.

Seth [00:14:09]:

Yeah. You had to tag your corporate. Yeah.

Roopak [00:14:11]:

Whatever money I needed, I had to Build other exhibits and work through that and then get the money off whatever I needed to

Seth [00:14:18]:

So you’ve been a hustler from the from the get go? You’ve been hustling?

Roopak [00:14:20]:

I was being a hustler. In fact, I was known to, have, take more on my shoulders than I can walk the weight with.

Seth [00:14:30]:

That’s hilarious. Certainly.

Roopak [00:14:33]:

Yeah. Yeah. Being a hustler, we got there. I could not. I didn’t, I was given advice not to move further with that. We don’t have finances. Patent will not do anything. And then It’s a

Seth [00:14:45]:

little early it’s a little early for it. So yeah.

Roopak [00:14:48]:

No. And then I came to US and, and I went to Brook, Brookstone, not Brook Brothers. Way back, we had Brookstone, which had all the major Gizmos and electronics and the latest happenings, and I saw Roombas, and those were exactly my design.

Seth [00:15:04]:

You’re like, oh, shocks. So that

Roopak [00:15:07]:

made me think, okay, as I grow up, I will create a company which will be helping the start up folks who have an idea and take that into a product. I love it. And that is what helped born Eureka.

Seth [00:15:23]:

Love it. Love it.

Roopak [00:15:24]:

My experience from an enterprise perspective, in India, I worked with BHARTI Telecom. At that point of time, there was no roaming concept, so we brought roaming in India.

Seth [00:15:35]:

Oh, wow. And India is a big country, so, you know, you’re gonna be roaming?

Roopak [00:15:38]:

A big country. So that was where I was thrust upon working with very, very, intelligent people who had big industry experiences

Seth [00:15:50]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:15:50]:

And that enabled me to get to a launching pad Where in about one and a half years, I learned as usually people will learn in 10 years. Wow. In terms of the development of products, in terms of launching of the products, in terms of doing the communication with people, So

Seth [00:16:11]:

You learned a lot.

Roopak [00:16:11]:

We we used Yeah. We learned a lot. We learned a lot. And my famous cliche was after I came to US for the 1st 2 years, my cliche was I worked with more Americans in India than I worked with Americans in America. It is

Seth [00:16:24]:

kind of ironic that how that works because yeah. It was it Because Yeah.

Roopak [00:16:28]:

Yeah. And that was the reason was when I was working with this team, this team was from Alka Lusit. So we were about 10 Indians and 50 Americans Oh, wow. In Delhi For 2 years. So that was such a big learning experience from a cultural perspective too.

Seth [00:16:45]:

Oh, it’s very differently culture, you know, in learning how Americans are fast talkers, fast movers, Indians are more agreeable.

Roopak [00:16:55]:

My my the way and that was the one of the key differences. That kind of, usually Indians will not say no. That’s our culture. Saying no is very important.

Seth [00:17:07]:

They’ll say they’ll say no.

Roopak [00:17:09]:

No. But I was in a culture where most of the folks were Either US return or UK return.

Seth [00:17:16]:

Oh, and they know how to say no.

Roopak [00:17:18]:

They know how to say no. And that was one of my biggest learnings during that Time, what to take on your plate, what not to take on your plate, and how do you work as a team?

Seth [00:17:28]:

I love it, dude. I love it. So so so what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Roopak [00:17:34]:

The best thing is the satisfaction that you get when you sleep at night, That you’re working for a cause that makes you happy.

Seth [00:17:41]:

That’s awesome. So then on the flip side, what keeps you up at night? You know, what what’s the scariest thing about being an entrepreneur?

Roopak [00:17:47]:

The scariest thing is, will you cross the finish line?

Seth [00:17:51]:

It’s so true.

Roopak [00:17:53]:

Will you cross the finish line? It can be any finish line that it is there. It is, are you able to achieve your goals? Are your assumptions validated correctly? Mhmm. And Everything else, like, people talk about the scariest factor is, will I be able to run the payroll at the end of the year or at the end of the month? Whatever your situation may be, that is after effect of meeting your goals. Absolutely. Instead of one of the key things I always tell, do not focus on the revenue. Focus on your short goals And make sure you are able to achieve them, revenue will come on its own.

Seth [00:18:34]:

Love it. So what is the most important thing we carry with you all the time?

Roopak [00:18:39]:

The most important thing I carry with me are the prayers.

Seth [00:18:43]:

I love it.

Roopak [00:18:44]:

So you should always be polite, And you should know where you stand and know about you, and talk to it among the prayers.

Seth [00:18:56]:

Love it. I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Roopak [00:18:58]:

So that is the biggest power that we have, we don’t realize. And if we are doing the right meditation And we are remembering who we are and to the community. We should just tell ourselves what we want on a regular basis.

Seth [00:19:14]:

Yeah.

Roopak [00:19:15]:

What makes us happy, and we should talk about it. So the biggest tool I always run with me are the players.

Seth [00:19:23]:

Love it. So people can find you over at mtap. Io. They can find you on LinkedIn, of course, that you’re you’re pretty active over there. Anywhere else where else do you like to hang out online?

Roopak [00:19:35]:

No. Generally, I hang out on LinkedIn and on my email atrupak@mtap. Io.

Seth [00:19:42]:

There you go. And, Roopak, it’s been great to have you on, and we’ll see everyone next time.

Roopak [00:19:50]:

Thank you, sir. Have a good day.

Seth [00:19:51]:

That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the marketing podcast network at marketing casts.net. Goldstein