The Long Game of Trust — A Conversation with Sreevatsa of Servify

In our Second Thoughts series, we speak with founders who have outgrown the “idea stage.” Builders who’ve lived through cycles, endured tough calls, and are now shaping enduring businesses that create real value.

For the third episode, we sat down with Sreevathsa Prabhakar, Founder and CEO of Servify, a global device care and service infrastructure platform working with some of the world’s most respected brands, from Apple to Samsung to AT&T.

It’s a conversation about humility, persistence, and the power of fixing what’s broken, both literally and metaphorically.

From engineer to mechanic to entrepreneur

Sreevathsa’s journey didn’t begin in a startup accelerator or an MBA classroom. It began in living rooms, fixing televisions as a young service engineer at BPL.

It wasn’t glamorous. “All my friends were in software jobs,” he recalls. “I was fixing TVs and refrigerators in people’s homes. Some relatives even joked that I had become a mechanic.”

But it was in those years of being shouted at by customers and navigating tiny rooms in Dharavi that the seed for Servify was planted. He recalls one customer, furious about a broken TV he had saved months to buy, who locked Sreevathsa inside his house until it was fixed.

The problem turned out to be a minor fix. But, when the screen came alive, so did something more profound, and that was perspective.

“He went from wanting to hit me to offering me a drink. He even offered me money. That day, I realized something powerful: if you solve a customer’s problem, they will go out of their way to reward you.”

That insight became Servify’s founding principle: every service interaction is a moment of truth.

Turning an unsexy problem into a global opportunity

Servify’s origin story isn’t the stuff of pitch decks. It was born in an overlooked corner of the value chain: after-sales service.

For decades, servicing was an afterthought. Brands treated it as a liability, not an experience. Customers expected frustration as a default. Sreevathsa wanted to change that.

“You order food online and it arrives in 15 minutes. You buy a $1,000 phone and can’t get it fixed in 15 days. That mismatch made no sense.”

He knew there was money, not just goodwill, hidden in efficiency. “There’s enough budget in large companies to deliver great service,” he says. “What’s missing is intent and integration.”

Today, Servify runs the digital backbone for global OEMs, managing device lifecycle, protection plans, repairs, logistics, and customer experience across 42 countries.

Why service is the new profit center

The narrative around service is changing from cost center to margin driver.

Sreevathsa cites the example of Apple Care: over $10 billion in annual revenue. Retailers too, he points out, make 2-3x higher margins selling protection and service plans than on hardware itself.

And yet, most companies still structure service at the bottom of the hierarchy.

“Find me one Chief Service Officer among the top ten electronics companies,” he challenges. “You won’t. Service heads still report three or four layers below the CEO. That’s where the brand promise actually breaks.”

Servify’s bet is simple: service is the ultimate expression of trust. And trust, done right, is monetizable.

Building a moat in a business of chaos

Unlike the models of consumer tech, Servify operates in the messiest kind of business that involves logistics, parts, repairs, and people.

What makes it defensible?

• Complexity as a moat. Every product, from phones to appliances to cars, is now a connected device. Managing their service lifecycle is immensely complex. Once you solve it, you can’t easily be dislodged.
• Technology as a multiplier. Servify’s unified platform connects OEMs, retailers, insurers, and customers, a full-stack infrastructure that creates predictability in an unpredictable domain.
• Global validation. From becoming a trusted partner for Apple and Samsung in India to powering AT&T’s protection plans in the US, Servify has become the invisible layer beneath some of the world’s most trusted brands.

“We’ve never lost a client,” he says. “That’s our real KPI.”

Choosing the enterprise road over the consumer shortcut

Many service startups tried to build direct-to-consumer. Servify chose the harder route: enterprise-first.

“If you buy an iPhone, you want Apple to fix it, not an unknown third party. So we went where the brands are. It takes longer to win trust, but once you do, it’s durable.”

The strategy paid off. The company now manages millions of devices globally, embedded directly in OEM ecosystems. Expansion to new geographies, including the Middle East, Europe, and the US, follows the same “land and expand” model: start small, prove reliability, then scale.

Each new market takes 12–18 months to operationalize, with technology and governance replicated but operations localized. “We’re still in hour one of day one,” he says of the US expansion. “The opportunity is that large.”

On leadership, humility, and giving credit away

There’s a rare self assurance in how Sreevathsa speaks about success. He insists that Servify isn’t a one-founder company anymore.

“There are now five other co-founders,” he shares. “It’s an acknowledgment of the people who built this with me. They’ve earned it.”

The WhatsApp group of the leadership team is called “Chief Vision Officers,” which shows the importance given to shared ownership of a long-term mission.

“You’re not the only superstar in the company,” he says. “Conviction is my biggest source of funding and the team is what gives it direction.”

IPO as a milestone, not a finish line

As Servify prepares for a potential IPO, Sreevathsa’s mindset is notably unsentimental.

“An IPO isn’t a funding event. It’s a maturity event. Governance, accountability, public scrutiny — all of that is good for the company.”

He’s pragmatic about the “unicorn” label too. “Sure, we may list above a billion dollars,” he says, “but that’s just a number. The real value is what we create five years after that. If the listing price goes up 5x in three years, that’s when investors truly win.”

Servify’s financial discipline makes that plausible with strong gross margins, positive unit economics, and recurring global contracts. In his words:

“We’ve built a real business on fundamentals. The valuation should follow the value, not the other way around.”

The next frontier: global scale, local trust

Servify’s playbook for expansion is methodical: go deep before you go wide.

The company operates in over 40 markets, but is now focusing on deepening presence in the US, which is a huge device protection and service economy.

“Cracking AT&T took two years of effort,” he says. “But once one global player trusts you, others follow. We’re now live with three regional US telcos and expanding into Europe.”

The moat is now both technological and reputational. When Samsung or Apple vouch for you, doors open. But maintaining that trust across continents, partners, and thousands of daily service interactions is the real challenge.

“We’re the invisible layer of trust between the brand and the user,” he says. “And that’s what makes this business special.”

Second Thoughts

We close every episode by asking: What’s a second thought that changed everything?

For Sreevathsa, it was perspective. When he was that young engineer locked in a room in Dharavi, he felt scared and unsure of what he did. But it also became the most valuable education of his life, which went on to become one of the founding principles of his entrepreneurship journey. Fixing things is still what he does. Just at a different scale.

Servify’s journey is a reminder that some of India’s most enduring companies won’t come from glamourous startup ideas. They’ll come from founders who stay obsessed with solving the unsexy, essential, and forever problems and find beauty in doing them well.

Brand Manager

Aayushi Thakur

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who is Sreevathsa Prabhakar?

A: Sreevathsa Prabhakar is the Founder and CEO of Servify, a global device care and service infrastructure platform that partners with leading brands such as Apple, Samsung, and AT&T. Beginning his career as a service engineer at BPL, he built Servify around the belief that every service interaction is a moment of truth between a brand and its customer.

Q: What is Servify and what does it do?

A: Servify powers the after-sales service and device lifecycle infrastructure for global OEMs and retailers. The company manages everything from protection plans and repairs to logistics and customer experience across more than 40 countries. Its technology connects brands, insurers, and customers through a unified platform, turning service into a scalable profit center.

Q: What inspired the creation of Servify?

A: Servify was born from Sreevathsa’s early experiences as a repair engineer, where he saw firsthand how deeply customers valued reliability and empathy in service. The idea was to fix a broken experience, the “after-sales care,” by combining technology, trust, and integration to deliver faster, better, and more transparent service.

Q: Why does Servify see service as the new profit center?

A: Sreevathsa believes that service is not a cost, but a revenue driver and trust builder. Companies like Apple generate billions through service programs such as AppleCare. Similarly, Servify helps brands monetize trust by creating better customer experiences, repeat engagement, and higher margins from protection and service plans.

Q: What is Servify’s global footprint?

A: Servify operates in over 42 countries. It powers major protection programs for brands like Apple and Samsung, and manages device care infrastructure for leading telecom operators such as AT&T in the US.

Q: What does “The Long Game of Trust” mean for Servify?

A: The phrase captures Servify’s belief that trust is the ultimate competitive advantage. Every repair, every service interaction, and every brand promise is a test of trust. Building it takes years, losing it takes seconds, and monetizing it, when done right, creates enduring enterprise value.

Sources

Youtube