Polar Mobile hits 10 million app downloads, International CEO Gupta plans to expand to 80+ employees

I had an opportunity to attend the SociaLight conference, a youth enterprenurial and leadership conference over the weekend and saw the Canadian CEO of Polar Mobile, Kunal Gupta speak. 

He said that he’s been all over the world, trying to expand Polar Mobile internationally, and they’ve finally succeeded in acquiring international customers that they didn’t have six months ago. His biggest complaint, though? That there’s not enough Canadian business leaders abroad. Gupta went on to say that there’s a lot of mobile companies turning to Asia for new growth opportunities.

Gupta went on to say that they hit the 10 million app downloads mark four or five weeks ago, and that lots of mobile companies are expanding internationally as Canada is a small country, following the 95/5 perspective (95% of revenue outside the country, 5% inside). 

They also say they’re continuing to hire people, as they want to nearly double the amount of people that work at Polar Mobile as Gupta believes that after two weeks of a hire, he realizes they should have hired that person a year ago. 

His biggest piece of advice? Focus on a single vision and goal, and go after it- basically create a company where there are “aligned change agents” to achieve the end goal. 

Gupta’s biggest challenge and fear? The pressure of the people around him. 

The Polar Mobile success story isn’t one that didn’t come without sacrifices for Gupta. He said that he worked non-stop for two straight years, and got sick almost every month from working so hard, but afterwards realized in the last couple of years that you have to make time for yourself. 

The tech world may be changing at an alarming pace, and there’s no faster ecosystem than mobile, but if you simply allow yourself to constantly burnout and get sick, you’ll miss the key developments anyways.