MSP 501 Profile: IQ Interactive Proves that Hard Work Pays Off

Company Name: IQ Interactive

Company MSP 501 Rank: 270

CEO: Omer Choudhary

Headquartered: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 

Primary Services:

• Digital signage
• PoS

LinkedIn: IQ Interactive Inc.

IQ Interactive CEO and founder Omer Choudhary knows about starts and stops. He learned to overcome challenges as a racial minority starting a new business more than 10 years ago. And when the pandemic shuttered businesses, including his own, he once again turned a negative into a positive.

Like many MSPs, IQ Interactive was positioned to help its customers remain operational. As Choudahary said, “The pandemic brought on many opportunities for the right businesses to thrive.”

IQ Interactive’s Omer Choudhary

Here, the partner business founder discusses navigating the pandemic, overcoming the challenge of being a minority-owned business, and how technology vendor partners can help the channel. 

Channel Futures: What new opportunities and challenges came with the COVID-19 pandemic? 

Omer Choudahary: COVID-19 brought on many challenges initially. There is the complete shift in the way business is conducted and how consumers shop. This brought on many opportunities for the right businesses to thrive. Security is now more critical than ever given that majority of the workforce is working from home. Cloud-based applications are now a requirement that business can’t be without.

CF: Tell us the story of the biggest pivot you’ve ever had to execute. 

OC: The biggest pivot we had to execute was during COVID-19. This is when the shutdown was announced. Like everyone else our entire team was work-from-home (WFH). Opportunities and business ground to a halt. Our digital signage business went flat and our other core business, which services restaurants, was in limbo. This was due to the drop in dine-in business.

During two months of no activity, the head of sales and I met in the office. We brainstormed for opportunities and how to ensure we survive, every day. It was during this time we had our “aha” moment. We identified that we had to solve a particular problem for restaurants. They were using third-party apps for delivery and were paying 28-30% in commissions. They were losing money on every order.

Our development team went into action with a 30-day timeline to build an online and contactless ordering platform for our customers. This would help restaurants take online orders, eliminate the 28-30% fee, and keep more of their money. To help existing and new clients, we decided to give it to them for three months to try to see if it works for them.

This pivot was the fastest and biggest change we made in the way we sell. We onboarded 120 new restaurants — and that number is growing. The restaurant customers we onboarded saw online food sale revenue increase 25-50%.

CF: What was the single biggest technology or business decision that drove your company’s growth in 2019? How did it do so?  

OC: The biggest technology decision for IQ was …