Gautam Khorana

From freelancing as a blogger to leading an enterprise WordPress agency, and now building a world’s video-first DAM for WordPress, today’s guest has continuously reimagined what WordPress can do. Welcome to WP Legends. I’m Gautam, co-founder of Seahawk Media. 

Today, I’m joined by someone I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at several WordCamps over the years, most recently at WordCamp Basel. Rahul Bansal, founder and CEO of rtCamp. 

Rahul leads one of the most respected enterprise WordPress agencies in the world, a WordPress VIP Gold Partner, and serving brands like Google, Meta, and Al Jazeera.

Under his leadership, rtCamp has grown to over 200 engineers and expanded into product innovation with tools like GoDAM, a WordPress native digital asset manager for video and Web Auditor, a no-code lighthouse-powered site performance tool. 

In this episode, we’ll explore how Rahul built rtCamp’s enterprise-first ethos, why he keeps launching innovative tools, and how WordPress continues to evolve as the foundation for high performance, large scale digital publishing. Rahul, welcome to WP Legends.

Rahul Bansal

Thanks, Gautam, for having me here. And thanks for that wonderful intro.

Gautam Khorana

It’s a pleasure. Nice to see you again. We just met, it’s like I met you yesterday. We were at WordCamp, and hopefully I see you at WordCamp in US. I think you mentioned you’re kind of undecided at the moment, but we’ll discuss it in a bit. 

But let’s see the beginning. I want to know your origin story? Because when I met you in person also, I don’t think I ever asked you 16 years ago, what happened? How did you start?

Rahul Bansal

So 16 years ago, actually, rtCamp started before that, so I started before rtCamp, like, so I started as a blogger, first as activist blogger. So my first blog was not even a technology blog, it was a political blog. So, and business was never on my mind. In fact, politics was the career I was aspiring for.

Gautam Khorana

Oh, wow I didn’t know that.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah. So it was a political blog now archived from the internet, just because my political views has changed a lot from those days. So, but then, so that blogging started as a part of a movement in 2006, I guess 2005-6. There was some student movement brewing up.  But I found this tool, when that moment ended, I thought, this is something I can use further. And as an engineering student, I used to code a lot, I used to write a lot of notes in my personal notebook. So I kind of found it natural to put them online and they started catching up. People started using my code.

Gautam Khorana

When you started blogging, it was not on WordPress, of course, but somehow you found WordPress open source and you kind of like the concept of open source. Like what made you choose WordPress? Because at that time, Drupal was popular, Joomla was popular, Magento was popular. Everything was, you know, starting to pick up. Blogger was there from Google. I can’t even remember because I was not in this ecosystem. So what drove you to WordPress?

Rahul Bansal

So I was on actually Blogger only. So yes, my heart was into open source, but then like the first blog, the political blog that was like literally launched overnight. So there was like, whatever, the first thing we saw Blogger just launch it, start publishing content, gathering people, organizing movement. And then when it ended, I was familiar with Blogger. 

So it was natural for me to put my technical content on Blogger. Then came the second part, like now I was started to think blogging as a serious, something serious because I was in my last year of graduation. I had to figure out how to make a living also at the same time. So I thought like maybe we can take blogging as a full-time career.

And at the same time, there was an article about Google AdSense in Times of India, the newspaper. So I read about Google AdSense in a print paper in the morning, and then I configured ad network on my blog, and then I realized to drive traffic, I need a lot more customization, something that only open source provide. Open source gives that power to you.

So I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress and then there was no looking back. Once I was on WordPress, I have started customizing it heavily, started themes and plugins, started taking some small, like a tinkering request from friends. And my blog used to get a lot of traffic.

So I had a good problem first, I had this problem much earlier that how to scale WordPress, that was the first problem I faced, like high traffic, constantly crashing. So that made me explore Nginx and some amazing WordPress architectures, so that kind of set, so many good things happened in those early 1-2 years before even rtCamp started.

Gautam Khorana

Like you mentioned, good problem.

Rahul Bansal

Good problem, yeah. More traffic led to, and then another, in hindsight, another good problem happened was, even though my blog was very popular, I was constantly used to get covered in the top Indian blogger list and blah, blah, blah. There was speculation about how much money I was making. There was like the most Google keyword like Rahul Bansal AdSense income.

That was the I had to complete Google suggestions to give because people used to know how much money I was making. And honestly, I didn’t make a lot of money because I didn’t took a lot of ads like the text link ad or I had disguise as a editorial, so or pay tributes, many things I didn’t do. So I had high traffic but low revenue.

And then that means I had to make my site run in very low resources, like in as low cost as possible. That prompted me to look for something like Nginx, which set another career path later on. So it’s like, so I managed to run WordPress at scale in very low resources in very early, something that become my unique advantage offering, something which I later gave to other blogger friends.

So there was a blogging community in India. There were like bloggers meetup, BlogCamp, before WordCamp, there was a BlogCamp. And there was other blogger, even at an Indian BarCamp or BlogCamp, there was some meetups also, so other bloggers who were only writing used to hire me to do their work, and that’s how I started freelancing, and that freelancing later turned into rtCamp, so it’s like

Gautam Khorana

I see. So let me understand. 2009-10 is when you started your WordPress journey, etc., you know, from ground up, you know, on your own. And then WordPress Enterprise was launched in 2013 or 14, VIP, sorry, WordPress VIP and you were safe to say one of the first few people to get that status, WordPress VIP.

Rahul Bansal

Not first few, how to put like…

Gautam Khorana

Or the initial year or two, you were part in the initial or joined in the initial year or two, right?

Rahul Bansal

We joined in 20, so we were in touch with VIP quite early, but then, as I mentioned, our initial clients were not very enterprise, like they were like blogger friends and small businesses, and we were famous to run a lot of stuff in very low cost, so we were like a cost-effective agency, so naturally we were attracting people with less budget and that was not even a problem for me.

So I used to choose my client based on what they do. It’s like good people, good work. That is our value system. So good people also means good clients.

If somebody’s doing some shitty work, I don’t care how much they pay, we won’t take them as a client, not then, not now. But so we were like a lot more into like this bloggers, small businesses, hobbyists, nonprofits. The problem is when VIP approach us, so when we got in touch with VIP, they had some initial criteria that, and which was a valid one because they kind of heard about us. They heard about us, they got many good reviews about us, like this company in India has an amazing engineering practice.  We had open source contribution to backup, but we didn’t have a VIP client, we had a VIP client, but under the NDA, we were subcontracting through other agencies.

Gautam Khorana

I see.

Rahul Bansal

And we did, so we knew VIP platform very well that they also knew, but we were not ready to disclose the name, honoring the non-disclosure agreement with the other agency client through which is subcontracting. That was like, we stuck there for two years. They wanted us to give one direct client to them or convert one client they will send to them. So they were very kind. VIP was very kind that, so they were leads, even low quality by VIP standard, which other partners were refusing to take.

Gautam Khorana

I see.

Rahul Bansal

So they used to send it to us, but now they were very low quality. So it’s like in two cases what happened, VIP sent those leads to us. They were low budget, they hired us. So we got some business because of VIP even before becoming VIP partner. But those clients had such a low budget, they refused to become VIPs hosting client. 

Gautam Khorana

I see.

Rahul Bansal

So we got agency business, but we couldn’t tick that box that, hey, this is a VIP customer referred by or managed by rtCamp. And that partnership is stuck for two years, but then like karma or whatever luck happens. First WordCamp US, I met somebody in after party. They were using one of our plugin, rtMedia, and they were already on VIP. They wanted to use it on VIP and then dots got connected, and then we hired them as a custom client, like we onboard them as our client, and then that tick. And so I think we officially become VIP client in 2016.

Gautam Khorana

That’s not bad at all, almost 10 years now, huh?

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, yeah.

Gautam Khorana

It’s so funny as a fellow agency owner myself, like our businesses are the same, essentially. It’s just that the scale is completely different, like I don’t, I won’t touch enterprise at all, at least for now. I have actually collaborated with you on a couple of projects also, and I’ve seen the strength of your team and, you know, your team does an incredible job, which leads me to another thing. 

I think I read somewhere online that you have been contributing to WordPress for a really long time also, I think you have 30 or 50 contributors. How do you manage that? And I think a lot of core releases also you’ve been part of. Correct me if I’m wrong, I would love to learn.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, so in 2014, we had first patch in the WordPress core and since then, every release we had patches. The point that I think for last few WordPress releases, we were second biggest contributor in terms of number of people that sent patches to the core and I think number of patches. So it’s like how to put like, so contributing was always like, we always want to give back because whatever I earn, I earn from WordPress, like everything in my life I got because of WordPress. So there is like this sense of gratitude that I need to give back to the community, which gave me everything.

Gautam Khorana

I see, of course, of course.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, the level of contribution kept changing because based on circumstances in positive ways, like for example, so we had different approaches. Like initially we were this blogger focus, small business focus, blogger to WordPress and like, small business, I would say, not even enterprise.

Then we had one enterprise client and then for 2-3 years, some enterprises client, and then almost in 2014-15, we started becoming fully enterprise focus agency. But then at every focus point, there was like, we wanted to remain this boutique agency where I had this in mind that we will never cross 100 people.

And so we wanted to have like less number of people, but like a quality over quantity kind of approach and I think until COVID, before COVID also, we were like less than a hundred people.

Gautam Khorana

I see.

Rahul Bansal

But then suddenly we realized that we have a lot of potential that we can unlock. We have systems in place where we can turn a lot of people and we formally created a training center and it worked out very well. Like the training center worked out very well, so we started ramping up rapidly. Now, so while building this training program or training center, we had this idea that people only, so most, so this is a mismatch. 

We have this enterprise clients who really want to work with senior engineers. But then WordPress ecosystem didn’t have a lot of senior people. Most people find WordPress through friends. They’re not like, not long before there were WordPress courses in college.

Gautam Khorana

It’s true, I agree I agree 100%, 100% with you on that.

Rahul Bansal

So same bunch of people keep rotating between different agencies and businesses, so if you want to build, hire like 500 senior workplace engineers, I don’t think that those are the number of people exist in ecosystem, like high quality.

Gautam Khorana

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about it. We both have our struggles with hiring. Listen, I can confidently say that we are always hiring. I think so. Once you cross a certain threshold, like 50 people or 100 people, of course, then you are always hiring because of some reason or the other I think so.

Rahul Bansal

So yeah. And that is where we try to approach things differently, like inspired by, it’s just like, see, well, one thing I learned very early in my career, even in like life, like people are not absolutely good or bad, like while the agencies are not absolutely good or bad, like a businesses. So they’re like, you have to pick the good thing.

So Indian IT, the top five companies, I would say, are often like looked down for many reasons, like the employment bond and the low labor, low wages and many things. But one thing they did very well is that they took a lot of unskilled or semi-skilled people, put them into like a six month training, a very curated, amazing training program. And then it’s like in six months, they’ve kind of like gave them two years of experience. And inspired by that, we created our training center.

We started with 10 people-20 people. I think the highest match, we trained 70 or 80 people in one year. And then these 70, 80 people, like all trained in a classroom fashion, courses, daily assignment, check-in, quizzes, everything.  And then still, I was not, so there was internal assessment like this people has graduated, passed, put them on client project,, no, no, no, no.

We have made a name for ourself and before I put them on client project, I want to test them in battleground. And so what is better battleground than WordPress. Put them, put these people to WordPress. If they can contribute meaningfully to the WordPress Core, if they can pass review of WordPress Core committers.

Gautam Khorana

That’s a very, very good idea, that’s a strong, that’s a very good idea. That you have to create. That’s like an ultimate test.

Rahul Bansal

It’s like your ultimate test, yeah.

Gautam Khorana

It’s like the 12th board exam or your graduation fourth year college.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah. And then the pass, like to my surprise, they’re not even pass. Like I’m really feeling ashamed to not even recall my colleague’s name, but two of them become, I think, performance team representative. These were like people who were 12 months, like less than a year before they were in colleges. Just imagine somebody 10 months before was academic and now they are a performance team rep. Somebody was become notable contributor, I think they put so many patches, they had their picture on WordPress credit page, something like that. And I got all these updates for LinkedIn.

So it’s like, our training center runs so autonomously and as a well-oiled machine, that I get their update on LinkedIn in my feed – hey, I saw this guy. Oh, I saw this person in Slack and then I realized, oh, this person and me work in the same company.

Gautam Khorana

That’s crazy to understand that, unbelievable. But I’ve never seen, I’ve never heard of any program where somebody trains you to that level and pays you for the training also. It’s not free, of course, you are paying them too.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, we are paying them for training and there is no strings attached. They can take the training and join our immediate competition, no problem. I would love them to stay in WordPress. That’s the only expectation I have.  Again, it’s not in writing or in legal sense that we are investing so much you in to learn WordPress, stay in WordPress ecosystem, whichever company you like, there are amazing companies in WordPress ecosystem.

But through this training program, we managed to crack the hiring problem, and in the process, we ended up becoming such a large contributor to the WordPress. In a sense, we are giving back, but at the same time, this is working very well for us.

Gautam Khorana

All I know is that the core is becoming very strong now over the past year, especially, it’s become so good, you would agree. The plugins are getting faster, approvals, everything is becoming so much better in the WordPress ecosystem. I have a question which I ask every person who I interview and I will, I’m dying to take your take on it. Where do you think WordPress is going in five years from now? Not two, not ten, just five years. Consider with AI, so many improvements happening. Look at what Lovable is doing. Look at what Base 44, Framer is there. I know WordPress is not going to go anywhere 40% of internet is, but where do you think your personal opinion, where is it going?

Rahul Bansal

So they’re like, a lot many things, for example, so AI is first like multifaceted. So in the end, I believe like it is, the way I read it is AI is assistive intelligence. It’s here to assist you. So for example, it can give you a draft, but you are responsible for reading publish button. So AI is definitely going to speed up things. I use AI a lot. Thanks to AI, I coded in languages that I didn’t understand. I built one iPhone app just for a card game that I used to play with my friends. I built a Mac app just to unlock PDFs automatically, all the bank statements I get.

There is this huge, so AI is definitely a game changer. It is going to change the way WordPress is used, built, developed, but at the same time, I feel like…so AI won’t be anybody’s differentiator.

So that is my maybe controversial or contradictory take. Like if everybody’s using something that cannot be a differentiator, for example, like if all agencies are using AI-assisted programming, then everybody will save 60 to 80% of development time. So then hire us because we use AI to solve problem fast. The fast won’t be differentiated because everybody will be fast eventually. Sites build fast again, 

Gautam Khorana

Everybody’s hosting is becoming better every day, managed hosting is becoming every day. Cloudflare is there, CDN is being built in, security scans. Patchstack has made a massive name in the ecosystem and integrating with a lot of hosting companies. So yes, you’re right. So I think WordPress, overall, the reputation of WordPress is only becoming stronger every day.

But I wonder, will the market share remain the same? Will it go up or down the same? Possible to predict, but the way innovation is happening in AI is unbelievable.

Rahul Bansal

So it’s like there are two ways like, as an open source platform, we definitely won’t be left behind in the AI race. So it’s like, we are, so it’s like everybody, so the battlefield will change, but we will be there also. So it’s like, so, I’m more curious about what is post AI, because eventually this AI noise is going to get settled, whatever it’s like, for example, so another thing I realize about AI is that AI is like ChatGPT came and took the world by storm. And then you see how fast Gemini caught up, then Grok catching up and all, so then there’s a DeepSeek and all. So it’s like, so AI cannot be anybody’s differentiator. 

Gautam Khorana

It can’t be.

Rahul Bansal

Because like today, even after say 25 years, nothing comes close to the Google search quality. But when it comes to writing any essey, ChatGPT, Gemini, all other LLMs kind of do more or less like similar job.  So it’s like whatever AI boost we’ll have, so for example, let me put, Framer brings something with AI, no problem in three months, we will deliver it. If somebody catches Figma to Webflow conversion, somebody else will figure out similar logic in three months for WordPress themes.

Gautam Khorana

So true

Rahul Bansal

So what I’m trying to say that whatever people are innovating in AI, that uniqueness won’t last for more than three to six months, because I don’t know the way it is working, 

Gautam Khorana

I know yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rahul Bansal

So I believe the next race, that is where I have a different, so AI definitely as an agency, we have people working on AI, doing things in AI, I’m using AI and blah, blah, blah. But I’m thinking beyond AI or apart from AI. And that is where I think, so the WordPress need to compete with something like…

Gautam Khorana

I think Wix and Squarespace, I think also Wix and Squarespace so that it can go even to more masses. And masses can just click a button and launch. And I think Elementor is trying to solve that problem also very quickly. For example, by having hosting-launch-AI all-in-one bundled in. So it used to go to the masses now.

Rahul Bansal

And that is where my hope is that WordPress can still grow from here because until now, we were, as a WordPress ecosystem, we used to, we had this journey in mind, people will choose WordPress. Then they will enter our ecosystem and they will log, hey, plugin theme, should I use this plugin, that theme, this, so this journey need to be reversed. 

Something like, for example, they will come across very good, so they’re looking for a problem solution, they will come across a YouTube video and then they will relate this is a plugin or theme, but now they don’t have to go through that pain of, oh, I cannot use it without WordPress, oh, I cannot use WordPress without a hosting. Then so many decisions rather than every theme plugin business or anybody who has anything to do with WordPress should be able to, like a buy now button, can have embedded hosting launch, something like WP Cloud can do. 

So my biggest show of WordPress growth is actually through the platform like WP Cloud, which will reverse this funnel. People will find solutions first. And without them realizing they will be on WordPress. So it’s like somebody will discover something like SureCart like.

Gautam Khorana

Yes, yes of course.

Rahul Bansal

And then…

Gautam Khorana

Our dear friends suggest…

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, so they won’t, yeah, sure so they don’t, like they will come across your Twitter, YouTube, and somewhere they’ll click a link and they will just launch in the launch like it’s like 

Gautam Khorana

I agree, I agree.

Rahul Bansal

So like that decision to choose WordPress and find a hosting those and manage a server and manage backups and all those things that doesn’t come with Wix and Squarespace. So that that entire chain of decisions will be transparent to the customer. And I think this is a trend that that that is that I believe WordPress will still grow.

Gautam Khorana

And hopefully, I hope, and I think you’re right. Otherwise, we will be go.

Rahul Bansal

Definitely, we will.

Gautam Khorana

So we have built our businesses around WordPress to think about it. But obviously, you have so much confidence in it, and that’s the reason you pivoted and launched GoDAM and Web Auditor. You want to explain to our audience what it is all about and what made you launch them?

Rahul Bansal

So again GoDAM, so again, so when I said about WordPress and AI, so AI, I’m not worried about it, WordPress will catch up. Everybody will eventually become at the same level in the AI, that is my hypothesis. AI is good, I’m going to use it.

Gautam Khorana

I’m an engineer, now I’m an engineer. I cannot code anything, I can’t code shit, but finally, yes, I am a coder and I’m an engineer.

Rahul Bansal

So again, with AI also, what are you going to code? Like, are you going to code another forms plugin or e-commerce plugin? There’s so many of them. We need to find out what is missing in WordPress. Like, for example, why people using WordPress use YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, this kind of platform. And that is where we thought like WordPress has such an amazing content management system, such an amazing architecture. What we need for video is some transcoding servers, some content delivery networks, some specialized algorithms so we build them all on the GoDAM, bundle it into the WordPress, and that is the part one actually.

What GoDAM currently does is part one. The second part is where that WP Cloud shines because in the second part in GoDM, we plan to launch turnkey solutions, for example, Loom alternative, we already built the Chrome extension, we already have all the infrastructure, there’s just one feature pending that is going live next week, so that there will be team support and all, so you can have your Loom in $9, you can have unlimited members collaboration.

Gautam Khorana

I remember when I was in Basel and we were actually having this conversation at midnight at the hotel lobby bar, if you remember, It’s unbelievable. I remember seeing that very distinctly and playing with it. And a day before yesterday, I saw your link. I think somebody from your team posted about LinkedIn, about Web Auditor. And I personally signed up. You can see my e-mail ID, Gautam@SeahawkMedia. I signed up, ran a test, and it was pretty good. Like it was very comprehensive. So I know your solutions are pretty good. But yes, you are right about finding the traction. That’s the tough part with so much competition. And yes, you are right that you need to find the differentiator. And I think you’ve kind of found that already and working on that.

Rahul Bansal

Also, like it depends on people, like building something already just doesn’t excite me. It’s like, so like in this case, I won’t say what we’re building with GoDAM doesn’t exist. The things we’re building in GoDAM exist behind the SaaS platforms in proprietary ways, always. But I wanted to bring that power to the WordPress, like, for example, Wistia has this forms integration with Salesforce and all those expensive platforms, nothing against them. They have some enterprise focus good for them, but we also want some small business in WordPress to be able to harness that power where they can have lead generation through videos or e-commerce through videos.

And that is where rather than Salesforce, we can have Gravity Forms, we can have SureForms, we can have WPForms, all these forms plugin working inside video player. That’s what the GoDAM does is like it’s so unfortunately, some problems are such that we cannot do whole shared hosting or typical WordPress plugin approach. There are problems which require specific engineering, which is beyond scope of shared hosting clients, and that is where we need this hybrid approach where we build solutions that are built for WordPress, but because of engine restriction, we’ll have a small SaaS component.

And still, in our, and we are not trying to lock behind the SaaS, we are only charging people for whatever infrastructure they’re consuming from us, so it’s like technically the features are free, unlike many companies which have different features in different plans. We have all features in all plans, which is like just pay us for bandwidth, because that’s the only thing you are consuming, everything is free.

Gautam Khorana

Got it and Web Auditor, I realized, I thought maybe it’s just like kind of like, why do you need Web Auditor when you have Google Lightspeed or GTmetrix? Why do I need Web Auditor? But then I realized, no, it’s actually telling me, do this and it will lead to a 1% bump in your speed. Is that what is the core way to understand this, right?

Rahul Bansal

Yes so the idea behind Web Auditor was that all these tools are developers, like developer heavy, existing tools and then we have AI. So we thought like, what if we first gather all the information about your website, put it into LLM, do some prompt engineering and narrow down useful suggestions, something you can follow, like a marketing person can understand, hey, this change is something makes sense, and then they can drive decision, like they can tell their developer, like, why don’t we make this change, and this is probably like 10% speed gain we will have.

Gautam Khorana

I see.

Rahul Bansal

So that Web Auditor’s goal is to…

Gautam Khorana

I think that’s very smart. And I think, you know, that when end users start getting the hang of it and you have the freemium model, that’s the best way. So our listeners, please check out GoDAM and Web Auditor, the freemium model, and it’s pretty snappy, pretty powerful. And I wish you the best of luck for these two plugins. I know they, I must say they’re flawless, whether it’s design, the approach, even your launch, everything has been flawless. You have a lot of experience support, needless to say.

Rahul Bansal

Thank you, so we are just coming with a lot of white hair (pointing to the beard).

Gautam Khorana

We are coming up with time, so I have very few final questions for you. I’m very curious to ask you, like, I know you are a big believer in headless WordPress and you had, you have SnapWP also. So what do you think? What do you tell me? What is the future of headless? Because, you know, Kinsta also launched, Elementor launched, Seahawk has been exploring headless. We get some queries here and there about headless, but do you think it’s just overhyped? Do you think it will take shape in a few years?

Rahul Bansal

So let me put this where headless. 

Gautam Khorana

It’s pretty cool, it is pretty cool. I must say the overall thesis behind headless is not bad at all, but it’s not gaining traction at all. What do you think about it?

Rahul Bansal

Because it’s oversold and overhyped, that is my opinion.

Gautam Khorana

That’s what I wanted to know.

Rahul Bansal

So we are here to deliver headless if anybody wants it. But do people need it? The answer is 99% of the time, no. Like very few sites I will suggest to use headless, like as a consultant, like when clients walks-in and if they leave their decision, I should, we go for it. The pros and cons, like the ROI and everything, for very few sites, headless works. For most of the sites, traditional WordPress is much better approach. Like what people, so headless is not magic. Like people think like they can only get performance with headless like if you have properly fully pay cache, like.

Gautam Khorana

No, no, no, wow with speed plugins, now with so many speed plugins in the market, it’s becoming so easy. You just need to know how to use them well. You know, and there are no brainers like WP Rocket, but you know, FastPixel is there, Perfmatters. There’s so many in the market and you just have to configure and make a few tweaks. You can do really well. I also think you’re right.

Rahul Bansal

There is a new breed of hosting companies where like in the old days, we used to put our images on the CDN. These modern hosting companies put your entire webpage across CDN. So it’s like there are these edge nodes and all. So it’s like your website is actually not located in one web server. It might be hosted in one place, but it’s like cached it everywhere, like something like CloudFront also, sorry, Cloudflare, Cloudflare. 

So there are many advancement in technologies where, so if performance is, if somebody says I only need headless for performance, that is something I think like they haven’t explored all their options. But the reason headless is talked about so much, because people think it’s a silver bullet, like it’s a magic bullet, it will solve all their problems.  It doesn’t solve all the problem and it’s very expensive.

So that’s the idea when SnapWP to make it affordable by turning it magical. But it’s a very tough problem to solve, we are struggling a lot. 

Gautam Khorana

I know

Rahul Bansal

In fact, the SnapWP started much earlier than this GoDAM and the Web Auditor, but SnapWP is still in lab and other two products have the launch, they’re having the paying customers and everything. So that’s the thing like headless is tough problem. So either you pay a lot for it or it’s not going to be like turnkey, like turnkey is something you are trying, but.

Gautam Khorana

It’s not necessary for you to have it now because of the new solutions in the market that’s cool. And tell me about your team. Is your entire team in India or do you have remote workers from other countries as well?

Rahul Bansal

We have a lot of remote workers. The thing is that the way we do that fresher hiring in collaboration with colleges.

Gautam Khorana

That’s in Pune, India, that’s in Pune.

Rahul Bansal

That’s in India. So within India, we are spread everywhere. So our 80% team is in India. Then we have team members in the US, Bangladesh, a few more countries that I’m not able to recall. We have one person in Germany. So it is just like a few more countries, I think six or seven countries like, but we are more distributed within India because of the way we hire our freshers, like we get the students, train them. So that cycle is not, so that’s remote, but not a async, like people work from home, get training from home, but then there are Zoom calls, there are check-ins, there are like class teachers, there are like reviews, there is assignment.

So we need all people to be in the same timezone, and then we need to ship laptops, a lot of stuff, so logistics challenges are also there. Then this is a CapEx heavy program. Like we take like 70-80 people, pay them for a year without any revenue, then give them 10 hours. 

Gautam Khorana

That’s a lot.

Rahul Bansal

And if we get other cross borders involved, then there will be additional compliances.

Gautam Khorana

I don’t know. Kudos to you and your team. I don’t know how you do it because in services business like yours and mine, the capital, the expense of human resources and you’re taking a huge risk with spending hundreds of thousands dollars. It’s a gamble, but obviously it’s a calculated gamble and it has been paying off for rtCamp. So kudos to you and your team for that.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah

Gautam Khorana

Pretty cool, thank you. Anyways, thank you so much for being on my show. Thank you for being on WP Legend. And I hope I can see you at WordCamp Portland. You said you may be, may be not been traveling there.

Rahul Bansal

Yeah, yet to book my ticket actually, there’s some like…

Gautam Khorana

But I remember last year when we went, we enjoyed that ramen and lunch and Basel we went at that lobby bar. So if you come over, we should grab lunch again. 

Rahul Bansal

Definitely

Gautam Khorana

Okay, for sure. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Rahul Bansal

Thanks again for having me.