Deep Nayar has over two decades of experience in technology and entrepreneurship, particularly in engineering top-tier solutions for the IoT space. His profound understanding of the industry culminated in the creation of Flex83, the flagship Flex83 platform powering bespoke IIoT solutions for Industrial OEMs’ crucial business model transition. His innovative approach to problem-solving drives the creation of cutting-edge, customizable IoT solutions. Deep’s visionary leadership continues to push the boundaries of the IoT industry.
Company: IoT83
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Deep Nayar: Let’s talk about the more interesting stuff – About IoT83. The broad idea behind the company was to enable Business Transformation of the OEM world. We understand software, we understand big-iron and we understand Business Transformation. We have had the luck to be a part of transformations of different verticals; we participated in Telecommunications transformation from PSTN to mobile to IP world; we participated in Networking as it became Software-driven; in Security as SASE gained ground; Enterprise IT and the rise of Enterprise Apps and Core Applications driving e-commerce today.
Our analysis for OEMs was we need to empower them to build and own more optimized loT
Solutions. The market created loT Platforms to make it easy for Product Managers to do Asset Data to Dashboarding to kick the process; then Low Code Application Development Platforms helped build MVPs to pave the path further; however, the end goal remained elusive – as an Enterprise Grade Platform/Application was needed to run Business; where building from scratch remained the only way – very costly and highly risky. loT83 took a slightly different approach; It started to look at the problem from core functions and business logic standpoint; trying to separate the two and packaging all core functions into a middleware; On top, loT83 created an Enterprise grade Reference Solution for the fundamental Multi-Asset Handling functionality; this gave a lot of confidence to the OEM stakeholders, and they started to gravitate towards Flex83.
It has taken us 1000s of conversations, 100s of experiments, 50s of Applications, two dozen deployments – six years of multiple iterations of the APIs (we are in version 6) to make them meaningful, concurrent with long term value and stability.
We are committed to the OEM world; where our organization continues to work on the Product and Solution to provide proof of value for the OEM business and technology stakeholders in a multi-vector approach to Business and Digital Transformation. What does it mean? That an OEM cannot just focus on traditional sales and seeks the opportunity to enable newer revenue streams by servitization and changing the go to market approach; for instance, today an OEM can become an Operator and a Provider as well.
The old moats are getting broken and newer moats are in play. Flex83 gives OEMs best TTM and TCO in building and maintaining these moats (a suite of custom IoT solutions).
What inspired you to start your business, and what were the biggest challenges you faced in the early stages?
Deep Nayar: We have been involved in startups for the past three decades and have had the luck to experience multiple Full Product Life Cycles from idea to cash cow to end of life; Also, got involved in Business and went through multiple M&A, across both private and public companies. So, when 83incs was launched as an incubation house; we invested in multiple initiatives one of which is IoT83. We boot strapped it as we thought it’s vital to preserve equity.
Startups, as everyone is aware, go through multi shifts of different types and the risk of unknowns. But no one really understands the self and the team’s capacity to handle the entropy startup throws at you. You just keep going and adapting along the way. If the idea is to create value, the belief is you will find a way to do it, you just need to keep the crank running.
At what point did you realize your startup was gaining traction, and what key strategies helped you scale successfully?
Deep Nayar: Yes, when people start questioning you more.
We realized IoT83 was gaining real traction when our conversations with prospects shifted from “what does your platform do?” to “how can we integrate this into our business—and how quickly?” The level and depth of questions changed, with enterprise customers probing not just features, but also scalability, security, and IP ownership. When prospects begin to challenge your roadmap, request references, or push for pilots, you know you’ve moved from curiosity to real market pull.
As for scaling, several strategies were essential for us:
1. Relentless Customer Focus:
We made it a priority to listen deeply to OEMs and industrial customers, understanding their legacy challenges, business pressures, and what keeps them from scaling IoT solutions. Their feedback shaped our product, feature by feature.
2. Scalable, Modular Architecture:
From day one, we built Flex83 as a modular, cloud-agnostic middleware platform. That lets us adapt to complex customer environments, plug into their data flows, and handle millions of devices without re-architecting for every new use case.
3. Delivering Proof, Not Just Promises:
Instead of lengthy, high-risk deployments, we led with rapid PoCs that proved value on the customer’s data, in their environment, and with tangible ROI. Once the first win was clear, customers became our best advocates, and scaling followed naturally.
4. Building the Right Team:
We invested in a cross-functional engineering culture – DevOps, data engineers, domain experts so we could move fast without losing sight of quality or security. Our scaling strategy relied just as much on people and processes as on technology.
5. Staying Ahead of the Curve:
The AI/IoT world is evolving quickly. We continually invested in AI/ML, advanced security, and open integrations so our customers could future-proof their investments.
Ultimately, gaining traction was about solving real problems and delivering trust at scale. Scaling was about enabling customers to move quickly from first pilot to full deployment, without getting locked in, overwhelmed, or slowed down by technology. That’s the journey we’re still on, every day.
How did you approach funding and financial management during the scaling phase? Did you bootstrap, raise capital, or take another approach?
Deep Nayar: We bootstrapped. We have Product Market Fit; and we have Go-To-Market strategy in execution phase. We continue to gain momentum as more and more brand driven conversations start to fill our funnel.
We will need capital to grow beyond our SOM as we look toward SAM.
What role did company culture and team building play in your growth, and how did you ensure alignment as you expanded?
Deep Nayar: It is an ever-evolving thing. As the Product matures the Start up must mature as a company as well and so does the team. It’s a constant effort and needs to be managed succinctly as it can quickly overwhelm you, your management team and the entire company.
Looking back, what is one critical lesson you learned about scaling that you wish you knew earlier?
Deep Nayar: Never get complacent about Sales and keep at least two plus years of working capital.
