Our Q&A Wednesday today is with Ranjit Nayak, the founder and VP of Marketing for eVapt. It’s an early stage company in the Austin Technology Incubator that is finding ways to make Software as a Service (SaaS) companies more successful.

How did you first get the idea for eVapt?
Having worked for a decade in the enterprise technology sector, we saw that enterprises were having a difficult time keeping track of how various software applications services were being used. We took a ground up approach to solving the problem, which led to formation of eVapt. We developed the idea in the entreprenuership classes during our pursuit of the MBA degree at the UT school of Business. Winning the business plan competition at Carnegie Mellon University last year gave us a boost.

Give us the elevator pitch for the company.
eVapt provides the only on-demand service metering solution that meets the needs of SaaS (Software as a Service) providers seeking to accelerate their revenues and reach optimal operational efficiency. eVapt’s solution integrates painlessly with SaaS offerings, enabling vendors to focus on their core competency. In essence, eVapt enables the pay as you go model and a faster time-to-market of service offerings. Tight integration into the Salesforce.com (a popular Sales force automation tool) platform allows SaaS vendors to incorporate eVapt’s offering easily into their sales workflow.

How long have you been in the incubator, and what was your experience like getting in?
We have been in the incubator since Sept. 2007 and feel priviledged to be associated with it. Two of eVapt’s principals were evening MBA students at UT and therefore aware of the incubator through the Moot Corp program. The application process for ATI, as we like to refer to it, was rigorous. It allowed us to reflect carefully on our plans and make practical adjustments. Most gratifying was receiving the thumbs up signal from software industry executives that the ATI assembled specially to assess our business plan.

How has the company been funded so far? Would additional capital help grow the company faster?
The company was initially funded by the founders, and as of January this year we landed angel funding to keep us on our path of growth. Additional capital is absolutely necessary to help the company grow.

What can we expect to see in the future from eVapt?
There is good reason to believe that the SaaS market will grow inspite of an impending recession. Companies such as eVapt, which provide the backbone and backoffice capabilities for SaaS or on demand businesses, are poised to do very well in this environment.