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Building A Network For B2B Service Providers | Naman Sarawagi @ Refrens.com
186 Plays3 years ago
You all must have heard – It is not the destination but the journey that matters. This is the same with entrepreneurship.
In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Naman Sarawagi, Co-founder, Refrens.com, a Bengaluru-based venture that offers free invoicing, payments and expense management system.
Naman started his journey as a product manager at Freecharge and then went on to work with multiple start-ups. In 2018, he started Refrens.com which is a SaaS product helping freelancers and small and medium businesses in managing leads, invoices and payments from a single dashboard.
Tune in to this episode to hear Naman speak about his journey of self-discovery and his vision behind scaling Refrens.com.
What you must not miss!
- Naman’s Freecharge journey
- Refrens’ monetisation strategy
- Fundraising journey
Recommended
Transcript
The Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:15
Speaker
Entrepreneurship is more about the journey than the goal. And it's essentially a journey of learning about who you are. This episode is a fascinating peek into that journey of self-discovery of Naaman Saragi, the founder of Reference.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey, I'm Naaman. I'm the founder of reference
Introduction to Naaman Saragi
00:00:31
Speaker
.com.
00:00:31
Speaker
That's R-E-F-R-E-N-S.
00:00:34
Speaker
Nauman started his journey more than a decade and a half back, working with Gunal Shah to launch his first start-up, Free Charge, and he shared some amazing stories about how they built virality for Free Charge. He then went on to work at multiple start-ups.
00:00:50
Speaker
both as an employee and as a founder, with each stint adding to his journey of self-discovery.
The SaaS Solution: Reference
00:00:56
Speaker
In 2018, he finally landed on the idea that led to building up Reference, which is a SaaS product built for small and mid-sized service businesses, helping them to get leads, send invoices, receive payments and manage their business from a single dashboard. Here's Naaman telling Akshay Dutt about his amazing decade and a half long journey.
00:01:20
Speaker
I took up the job interview for Vipro just to make sure that I don't get outcast by all my classmates. But I knew that this is not the place to go. Then I went back to Surat from college and started spending some time with Dad's business, started looking at regular and other places. I thought we'll put this whole Sadi business to online.
00:01:50
Speaker
And then I decided here, this is not working out. Okay, we'll start looking for opportunity. So I wrote up, so at that time, you know, again, I contacted Ashi saying, you know, will you pay me to blog now this time? He said yes. And my first article was basically, you know, I struggling with a mobile recharge.
00:02:20
Speaker
I wrote a long 10 point article, you know, these are the things wrong with movie quick and recharge it now. And this is the opportunity.
Free Charge: The Early Days
00:02:26
Speaker
Then, you know, as expected, somebody commented this guy was fun. Alsha saying, can we talk? So I went to meet him in Bombay. At that time, the term free charge was not point. He had an idea saying most people who walk into the mobile store, mobile store, Boulker cake, SR group, chain order.
00:02:46
Speaker
This was a retail chain and he has this insight saying 99% of people who come to the mobile store actually come for recharge. Now if we can divert them to other places, this would increase the retail footfall of all other places. So it was his idea. Recharge brings in a lot of footfall. We have to redirect it to some other place.
00:03:07
Speaker
So essentially what we thought is all these Groupon clones were bad business model because again, those were push, right? You had to push emails to them. And if there is a pull mechanism, which is a recharge mechanism, people come to a site, we give them coupons and that translates into retail. That was the basic idea. And the first condition that I think I told him was here, you have to have very good partnerships for this because at Onyomu we had tried this, write a review and we'll give you retail coupons and then, you know, drive retail.
00:03:36
Speaker
And so he said, I've already tied up with McDonald's. What was, I mean, who was Kunal Shah at that time? Kunal Shah was the CEO of a BPO owned by the Tundal Group. Okay. So if you've heard of Sandeep Pandan lately as the co-founder of Free Charge. Now, Tundal Group is a very large business family, you know, very influential. And they own the first unit of the first SEZ in India.
00:04:02
Speaker
So you can imagine that way. And Punal had grown up the ranks. I mean, joined at the lowest position at that organization and grown up the ranks to become the CEO of that. Well, have he joined as a telecaller or something like that? He joined as a web designer, I'm told. So they had like IT division and a BPO, et cetera. And one fine day, when the company was struggling, was sent to US to do some business development, he did very well at that and slowly became this MD.
00:04:32
Speaker
So we started working on free charge. Okay. And what I was doing in the last two years, I had read every article about every startup that had been published on the internet giga, tech crunch, you know, I studied about 30, 40 articles, anything and everything. Whatever I read, I'd applied everything to free charge.
00:04:51
Speaker
Without thinking, I would have contacted 100 journalists, 20 replies, so no package at that time, 21 year old trying to do random stuff. And at that time, I did not realize what I had done or what I had achieved.
00:05:12
Speaker
And what was your role? What did you get hired for? I got actually hired as a consultant to help Kunal understand the recharge business and how teenagers behave with their mobile recharge, because 96% of the mobile telecom was recharged. But anybody in a large company only had a postpaid phone, right? Where the company would pay the phone, so they'd never seen what recharge means. I was hired as a consultant to ease out my pay. They took me as on payrolls.
00:05:40
Speaker
But I ended up directly managing technology, product, marketing and PR. On single-handed, I didn't have any money. So, technology is the first version. Anything apart from the web design, me and Punal used to discuss in very detail. And that again, you know, on the hindsight, I can say most founders in India, at least do not
00:06:04
Speaker
spend so much time on their product. So on the design of the coupon itself, we would have spent at least 70-80 hours of discussion from the thickness of the paper in which the coupon would be printed to the width of the coupon to what does the coupon say, the terms and conditions of the coupon.
Marketing Strategies and Viral Growth
00:06:21
Speaker
Why is it a paper coupon and not a digital coupon? Exactly. That's what I wanted to ask you. Why paper? A, because McDonald's did not have a way to redeem digital coupons.
00:06:30
Speaker
You know, paper coupon can be kept in the cash register as like a solid thing, right? Second, you know, when we, that was a constraint, right? But that actually added as a benefit because paper coupons can actually be displayed, right? I mean, when I am redeeming my paper coupon on McDonald's people around me will get curious.
00:06:46
Speaker
And they'll see free charge. Right. So if you look at any religion or any brand, there is a physical marker, right? That coupon was our physical market. They online reach our website of a physical marker. So you never reach that to that brand, right? So that was our physical marker. People started saying your coupon print concept, which was actually true. You could print your own coupon and take it to McDonald's, they'll still accept it. But we then put a hologram on top of it, a 3D hologram. And then everything starts looking authentic.
00:07:16
Speaker
And I'm not sure if you know the election commission. Right. So, and we did a lot of those stuff, you know, we actually. Pre-charge the online product. Hard copy coupons distribute.
00:07:35
Speaker
we queried and that again there also we thought, so our aim was the redemption rate of the coupon. We thought so Domino's at that time used to give coupons in newspapers, right? And were randomly kissing the coupons. And hence the brand value of, you know, Domino's would get diluted. So at that time for a teenager, and you know, people early salary guys, right? So Pizzahat was still a, you know, aspirational brand. And Domino's was not because Domino's used to give coupons.
00:08:03
Speaker
And that coupon giving thing actually dilutes a brand. So we thought, if the coupon is getting redeemed, then it is not diluting, right? Limited coupons and reward anymore. So our core matrix at free charge was the redemption rate of coupons. And so we thought coupons would be courier courier cost was 17 rupees. Now we started charging 10 rupees for courier.
00:08:24
Speaker
So other recharge websites at that time used to charge 1 rupee or 1% as convenience fee because there is not enough arbitrage to be made between the payment gateway fees and what your recharge telecom companies gave you. So that was their only revenue. For us, the courier fee did not cover up the courier cost, but that was an investment that the guy using the site would make.
00:08:45
Speaker
And because he's made a 10 rupees investment on that coupons, he will not throw it away. And we've designed the coupons in a way so that you can keep it in our wallet and it would stick out a little. Acting as a reminder, we are Merepa's Pachashupeta Coupon. One more thing, we did not say this is a coupon for a free burger. We said this is 50 rupees worth and then the fine print said it's free burger.
00:09:06
Speaker
So you can't throw away a 50 rupees thing, right? Almost like a SODEX or coupon. Well, it's like cash equivalent, basically. So that is what we ended up doing. And we measured about 100 wallets to come up with the size of the coupons and credit cards, et cetera. And we have a definition to it. It has to be a little thinner than credit card, but not as thin as a currency note. It should stick out of the wallet, et cetera. And I think that was the secret behind that redemption rate.
00:09:32
Speaker
And so free charge launch was a great experience. Because I remember going to IIT Bombay. I had a cousin in IIT Bombay studying back then. And I went there to explain to people that discharge SEO there. And then I realized that people in IIT Bombay, whatever debit cards they have, that debit card does not have a CBB code. Because it's not meant for online stuff. So I used to give them my credit card. And they used to do it on my laptop. And I used to hand them the coupon then and there.
00:10:01
Speaker
This was, I think, day 7 or day 8 of launch. Within the next 7 days, we had orders from every IIT and every IM in India. So, IIT Bombay say, go viral effect turanta, right? And we are talking about, you know, Facebook was just getting popular. We are talking about 2010, right? So, not every student was on Facebook, but these IIT guys were because, okay, senior Stanford, and then, you know,
00:10:24
Speaker
That is the first viral thing that I experienced. And we went to various media houses. I think by month three, we were covered in newspaper, magazines, TV, Rediff.com homepage. So we achieved whatever coverage you would want to achieve. Every blog in India had covered us.
00:10:45
Speaker
Which is basically you sending them cold emails to get them interested. I think I used to read Nikhil Paawa of Media Nama. I'm not sure if you know him. But he used to, you know, generally rank saying your logo, email, when they reach out to journalists, they don't know how to write emails. And this is how you should write, you know, very bulleted points and very, you know, to the point thing and ask what you want. Don't like it around the world. I did that. I did that. And I got covered by a lot of people.
00:11:14
Speaker
I am at a total expense of 5000 rupees. I did a wire release also, but that wire release failed. I mean, we did not get coverage from the wire release. So, and then wrote to ET Now Peh Sudhir Shah used to run a show called Starting Up. And I wrote to him, he replied, you know, very shortingly. And then we recorded the next week and we were on live television, you know, on TV, I think first week of October. August we launched on TV, we are on first week of October. And 30th October, I quit free chat.
Transition to Ziptile and Twitter
00:11:43
Speaker
So, when free charge was happening, so, you know, on the product side, everything is nice. Okay, but free charge at that time. So, India may start a culture. Okay. Manage OB a tech range, a tech range, I had this notion of startup culture.
00:11:58
Speaker
And I was almost working in a silo in free charge, right? So, digital marketing, I wasn't discussing with anyone PR Kelly, I wasn't discussing with anyone. Technology, again, I wasn't discussing with anyone. Okay, I had the sales side of thing was taken care by Kunal and there was one more guy who's very senior at Spice Telecom now.
00:12:15
Speaker
Right. And logistics call center partially managed by, by, by sales, you mean partnerships, partnerships with, with all these retail companies. Right. But when I'm saying, you know, today actually sounds like an exaggeration. I was directly responsible for technology, the digital product marketing and PR. Okay. In, in October, I think I hired somebody for digital marketing, SEO, make junior guy. And, uh, you know, we'd outsource the initial development of the website in August, just before the launch, we hired one developer.
00:12:46
Speaker
So, 0 to 1 lakh users in one developer. I didn't know how to hire, honestly. So, that gap was there. But, parallelly, there was this company called IndiePoles that was being built. So, I read about it and they were working on that missed call idea. And I got fascinated by the qualification of those people.
00:13:16
Speaker
Okay, honestly, you know, one of the founders was a Stanford graduate, other was IIT, I am graduate Sanjay Swami of Prime Ventures was leading it, right? So for various means, I contacted them and Ashi Sinha of Plug.in, where I was blogging all this while, had worked for Sanjay Swami. So there was some connection. I think 30th October, this is exactly one year after I joined Free Charge. I went to an event in Bangalore. So Free Charge was in Bombay, right? I went to an event in Bangalore, met the Ziptile team, indie polls became Ziptile later.
00:13:45
Speaker
And you know, then again at Ziptile, I became their first hire. Okay. You know, first guy in product and marketing. And Ziptile was eventually acquired by Twitter. Ziptile was eventually acquired by Twitter and Dubshop was a Twitter clone. So if you look, the whole Kuda would round circle. Okay. But when Ziptile, so after I entered Ziptile,
00:14:08
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the show.
00:14:33
Speaker
Today I can be very honest and say we couldn't find it. We couldn't find our path. For a temporary moment, our significant revenue was coming from B2B and it felt like we had become a communication channel for media companies. We ran very, very large campaigns. But once this whole 3G, 4G things were coming in,
00:14:54
Speaker
We did not have a game there. So like these Indian Idol members. So those were powered by Zibdial. Absolutely. Mist call. If you've seen Dance India Dance, right? Rahul Gandhi actually used Zibdial for his UP campaign, I think 2012 election period. So 2011, December was rallying somewhere and the call to action was, you know, if you want to listen to Rahul Gandhi, give a missed call.
00:15:20
Speaker
And this was advertised on radios across rural UP. And people used to call up our zip dial numbers. And so I've actually been on a call where Rahul Gandhi was there. I've been on a mail trail where Rahul Gandhi was there. So that missed call, then the call would go back to that person where it would play a recording of Rahul Gandhi. Yes, yes. Or it could be SMS being triggered or something, right?
00:15:42
Speaker
So we've done some very nice campaigns, but we couldn't really find that big thing. How does this actually become a very large company? We couldn't pivot to becoming an app company. We were already in 2014-15. I left in 2012, but already in 2014-15. But revenue was good. From whatever I heard back, revenue was good.
00:16:04
Speaker
And there is one small incident that happened in Ziptile. And again, this will go up to connecting the dots in the past. So we had this number where if you could give missed call, you would get live cricket scores. And this is because two of our founders were big cricket fans. They just created it for fun. And then this became a thing. One fine day, we got 1 lakh calls on that number. So the day before, we got 100 calls. The next day, we got 1 lakh calls.
00:16:29
Speaker
we tried to figure out Kiavua and then we realized one sms gabsha somebody had shared our number
00:16:36
Speaker
saying this is some magical number, you give a missed call on this number and you will get a call back. You will get SMS with the latest cricket score. We are in 2011. So mobile internet, etc, is still not a big thing in most parts of the world. So this was like a big thing. There we thought, you know, we could build up for other things as well. But we started selling this story to media companies. We got very, very popular. We got very popular.
00:17:03
Speaker
I wouldn't say we would have created like a very large company. I think that the whole thing was surviving because we had very, very hardworking people, right? I mean, and with all the connections possible.
00:17:16
Speaker
But, and I was getting bored because I came from this internet product, you know, mindset. I didn't know what to do, right? I mean, there's no copy-writing to do. There is no other stuff to do. And so I was also managing PR for some time, right? Doing technology sales, doing sales for internet companies. So we had this product called Ziptile to verify. They'll tell you, like you verify your mobile number through OTPs today. We had this, you know, we'll scroll on this number and we'll verify.
00:17:45
Speaker
I was responsible for selling that to internet companies, obviously with the founders, but that was my first sales experience.
Networking and Industry Connections
00:17:51
Speaker
And I had sold to every company. So I had spoken to the technology and product team of Flipkart, Snaptein, Home Shop 18, Mentra, Clear Trip, Make My Trip, you name it. I had been to every office.
00:18:03
Speaker
And the difference of a good technology company and bad technology companies that started reflecting. So, you know, Snapdeal, I remember Snapdeal engineer actually, you know, pinged me one day. Can you please get this done? You know, I don't know how to do this, right? I actually got our engineer to write that piece of integration. Whereas Flipkart guys, they had a hundred questions to ask.
00:18:30
Speaker
Right? They integrated, both of them integrated eventually. But good technology team or bad technology team got a difference. I thought I was an engineer. So until then I did not know that.
00:18:43
Speaker
Anyway, so in 2012, I was still blogging. Some good things happened. I wrote an article about Flipkart. Sachin Bansal, Beni Bansal called me to meet up. Beni also offered me to join Flipkart. But you know, I did not. Also, just before I was leaving to meet Beni, my founder, Zimdal's founder, he said, you're not going to come back. They're going to offer you a job.
00:19:08
Speaker
And I'm like, how come I want to come back? I'm like, I'm not doing a job in zip dial. I mean, this was my idea somewhere, you know, you own it, but whatever, you know, job background, right? Because I've not seen your job. Right. Until this, I have not created my resume. Okay. I don't know. I was high on whatever I had achieved. I would say that way. Okay. Biddy Bancer did offer me a job.
00:19:36
Speaker
Okay. But I said, no, no, like very blunt, no. And I'd met other founders also spoken to few other founders also, to call through my blogging, right. So I still knew that connection here, you write content on the internet, right inside will content people will connect you. And this content was not read by a lot of people. So a good article on next big what at that time would be read by probably 1000 people, the 1000 was like a big number back then.
00:20:04
Speaker
And when I'm saying all people, I had spoken to people who run very large porn industries. You know, I'm not sure if you've heard of SabitaBhavi.com that was a very popular porn film, right? So I've spoken to the founder also there.
00:20:16
Speaker
We were trying to do some ad placement in one of the comics where Savita Bhavi would introduce a product of the internet. So some crazy stuff there. Thankfully we did not do that. Creatives were all done and then we pulled back. This was sort of freelance work that I was doing during college days. That is where this whole thing happened. But the whole point was that I got to meet and talk to a lot of people because of whatever I was blogging and the content I was putting out.
00:20:45
Speaker
Then I started working on this idea about price comparison on the internet. So I knew that e-commerce was rising. Price comparison was a very easy industry to get into. Two developers inside a room could do this on a field of revenue.
00:21:02
Speaker
During my internship days at Onyamo, I learned about a company called EZGo, I-X-I-Go.com. I think it's been on your show. Exigoka SMX search was being written in our office in Onyamo. I mean, we were trying to integrate that, you know, do a flight search, et cetera. And EZGo earned through, you know, affiliate revenue.
00:21:19
Speaker
So, I always had this thing here, side my project started there. And during Ziptile days itself, you know, started something called MyPriceIndia.com, right? We'll crawl a few sites. So, I had written crawlers during my internship days. We'll crawl a few sites, bring up prices of a single phone on one page and then on affiliate revenue.
00:21:37
Speaker
So what happened is I went to Bini again, saying I'm working on this startup. Would you help out or whatever? Not for funding. I just wanted to discuss. He said, don't do it. Watch what I industry. Those are types of industry. This is 2011. Flipkart hasn't raised even $20 million. And I did not understand quantum of money. 250 crores and 2500 crores were same in my mind.
00:22:07
Speaker
And I literally thought here 250 crores is not small. And how do you even calculate the size of an industry? I mean, something that is growing, how do you put a number to it? And he said, don't do it. But sometime around the last of that meeting, he ended up saying, Flipkart na ke karlo. And again, I misunderstood things. And I thought here, on one end, he's saying, don't do it. And other end, he's saying, do it inside Flipkart.
00:22:38
Speaker
But again, he would always give me a meeting whenever I, you know, I pinned him. So I remember 9am in Flipkart office multiple times, you know, we would have breakfast together, you know, and that article that I've written about Flipkart wasn't like an accident or something. Since 2007, I had gone to Flipkart Pay, Flipkart's homepage every day.
00:23:00
Speaker
Just to study, every page, you know, the collections page, product page, home page, almost every day from 2011 to 2007, 2011. In 2011, one fine day I wrote this article. And that is where the team called me up. So again, all these were happening through curiosity for the internet, etc.
00:23:21
Speaker
Then I wrote another article on somewhere, you know, anonymously, I wrote an article to get a backlink. And then somebody from Saff Partners called me up. And I'm like, wow, right. And then a 23 year old walks into a nice five star hotel to have coffee with this, you know, guy, you know, who's from the VC industry and he pays the bill obviously. Right. And this guy was Mukul Aroda. He's now the partner at Saff. Very nice guy. He tried to explain.
00:23:51
Speaker
But see, until I met, so Bini was trying to tell me, don't do this. And I was not there for funding with Bini. It was still a weekend project for me. But I almost took it like a personal challenge.
00:24:13
Speaker
Then again, I wrote another article for a backlink, then Vijay Shekhar Sharma contacted. That's a, oh man. You must be a phenomenal writer. I don't know. I don't know. I would say, I don't know. I don't know. They have a lot of stories to say. They don't write. They've discovered, I mean, they do human behavior changing stuff, right? They don't write, right? As credit is such a popular product,
00:24:43
Speaker
All we know about credit is through speculations, right? Gave campaign as a hair because as of above. The credit team is not coming out and saying, see, this is the theory behind this. So this is the thesis behind this. True for a lot of products, right? So Vijay and I had met one year earlier at a, again, plug.in guy conference, which was a thing. Vijay was a speaker and he'd come and this is 2011. I said, and 197 was big. 197 was competing with Ziptile because they also had this cloud telephony product.
00:25:12
Speaker
and PTF had just launched, which was competing with free charge. Okay. And I said to Vijay, you know, that, and at that time he said, you know, this is just a foot in the door. I want to create a bank 2011. Okay. So, and I was like, yeah.
00:25:31
Speaker
It said some big things and I was like, okay, 2011, he picked me and I'd written those articles anonymously. Again, you know, articles were not to get funding or anything. Okay, funding was a weekend project, simple, right? And all these articles were anonymous. I told him, you know, you already know me, you know, and then we spoke and he's like, if you're in Delhi next week or sometime, we should catch up. I was coincidentally in Delhi next week and met Vijay.
00:25:58
Speaker
We met for nine hours straight. He'd just come back from China, and he's a big Jack Ma fan. And he was telling all these stories from China, and that this will happen, and that will happen, and stuff like that. The meeting started at 11, ended at 8 o'clock. And very nice, humble guy showed me around the office, introduced me to a lot of people. A couple of people he was introducing me to already knew my name.
00:26:22
Speaker
Okay. And that is where it hit me that, you know, kusto mane kiya hai life. Okay. But a bibhana thoda hai hai. Okay, feel whatever I had achieved it. During free charge, I did not realize what I'm doing, you know, something significant is what I'm doing. After free charge, I think thoda thoda, kusto kiya. And also because I was not getting to do a lot of stuff in zip time. See, the difference, when you're an early employee,
00:26:47
Speaker
if you work with a solo founder, which was Kunal, you get a lot of freedom, right? And you become the bouncing board by default. So whatever the founder is thinking, you absorb that, right? Good, bad, become the devil's advocate or whatever. In Zimdiil, the discussion would happen between three founders, right? So I wasn't part of the thought process, I would know the end outcome, but I wasn't part of the thought process, right? So generally getting bored,
00:27:15
Speaker
And also this whole cloud 10, 40 versus internet, you know, stuff. So that was also also a disconnect. Anyway, so Vijay, you know, at the end of the meeting, he promised to fund me. Nice, you know, and one month later, I got married.
Investment and Startup Challenges
00:27:31
Speaker
And two days before the wedding, I get a call from Vijay's office saying, you know, Ravi Adusomali is in India, he's the partner at Saif. He wants to meet you because more like a hygiene check, right? I mean, just to
00:27:43
Speaker
And so one day before the wedding, I fly back to Bangalore. I meet him, come back. I'm like, I get married. And you know, one month later, I don't hear back from from anyone. Right. So and there was no communication at all from anyone from business office. I've forgotten about them. And you know, whatever I had this, I don't know, anger, disappointment, whatever, I never understood what went wrong.
00:28:11
Speaker
One month later, I'd written an article about way to SMS. Okay. And that was my last article, January, 2020, January, 2020, the founder contacted me. The founder was also my client. He said, I know you're doing something. Let me know if you need any help. And I said funding. See, this is where it will all went wrong. I knew that this was a weekend project, but because somebody had contacted me, it felt like I could raise funds. And now I want to raise funds. Okay. So this whole movement was
00:28:40
Speaker
On the hindsight, it was wrong. Okay. And this gentleman, you know, V2 SMS founder, he funded me. We started building this up. I had a co-founder then. Okay. Because I had this lack of confidence, I would say, here, I'm not a good enough engineer, or honestly, I thought, you know, I need a engineer, you know, and I need a designer, and this would be co-founders because, you know, you share wealth equally and whatever.
00:29:08
Speaker
And I'd made them equal partners. One of my colleagues at Zibdile, he knew that I was starting up on the side. And he said, you know, you've picked up the wrong partners. And I'm like, it doesn't matter, you know, you picked up the wrong partners. What I did not realize again is, you know, the responsibility, right? You know, whatever money has been put, it was all me, you know, putting in the money.
00:29:34
Speaker
All those stuff. And what started as a weekend project now had some money in the bank. And we started 2012, September with my job at Zibail. Started working on this product. And all those again, now I'm a startup founder. Right. And I started doing all the mistakes that I hadn't learned about. Right. Hiring. Right.
00:30:01
Speaker
And then everything started. What kind of mistakes were they like? Co-founder selection, what kind of mistake? Co-founder selection may not very sound guy with respect to the work that he was hired for, that I was looking for. I thought he would do engineering, but he started outsourcing engineering.
00:30:20
Speaker
Okay, where I was paying, you know, this was still happening, but that realization never hit, you know, I was still lacking confidence. I was like, I'm new in Bangalore. But everything that I had got a co founder for, for all the fears, I realized at the end of the day, I was the guy doing it, you know, hiding my post and you know,
00:30:40
Speaker
how to find an office for that startup, everything I ended up with. You got co-founders for the wrong reason, but it was mostly just a fear of unknown because of which you thought there is safety in numbers and hence you got. A fear of unknown, fear of unknown, yes. Partially, I think me and the co-founder, we came up with the idea together. And I had this idea about affiliate revenue and price comparison from ECGO days.
00:31:07
Speaker
And, but we were discussing multiple ideas and then, you know, we came up with this idea. I think the startup wasn't doing good. So between September and March, we'd lost about 70% of the funding that we got, you know, giving salaries to people, etc. A couple of good hires there. Okay. Not good hires because of my skill or something. I mean, just hardworking people who happen to join. I think we were in, in April he quit. My co-founder, he couldn't handle the pressure or I don't know. I mean, it wasn't going very well. So he quit.
00:31:35
Speaker
And there was one other guy we'd got from Yahoo. Okay, so this this guy from zip dial who told that I've got the wrong partners. He introduced me to this guy from Yahoo. Again, you know, he was a policy again, you know, all the stories that I've experienced, I was very influenced by people from good colleges, you keep a kind of a brush that I couldn't get into college. So this co founder is from Bixplany. Okay, this other guy is from an IT and working for Yahoo. Okay, and Isabelle founders from IIT, I'm in Stanford. Okay.
00:32:05
Speaker
Nothing wrong with those, nothing wrong with these things. But my point is probably my judgment criteria was overshadowed by that particular thing. And Kunal appointed me this, you know, when I was, when I resigned from free charge to join Ziptile, he obviously every founder tries to convince you. But Kunal told me that, you know, maybe you're just carried away by their degrees. And Kunal was a college dropout. We wear that as a badge now.
00:32:31
Speaker
But nothing wrong with, you know, he being a college rocker or anything, I'm just too fascinated saying, A, this is the idea that I always wanted to work with, you know, the mystical thing, right? This is what I say, emotional connector, without realizing here, manage your ideas, so it's about 2008 method. Now, this is 2011, almost, right? The whole economy had changed. And secondly, fascination of working with people more qualified. And again, so the co-founder at my startup, this was called FindYogi.com, he quit. This guy who came from Yahoo, three months later, he quit.
00:33:01
Speaker
I was left with one engineer that is all and a site running.
00:33:06
Speaker
I meet this V2 SMS founder who had invested in us. Were you getting affiliate revenue? Very little. So I think July revenue was $20,000. We were lagging behind. We changed our name from My Price India to FindYogi. My Price India was the name the startup started, the weekend project started because I got that domain because SEO-wise that's a very strong name. I sold some bullshit to myself. Clear price comparison and not the game. Product comparison is the game.
00:33:33
Speaker
named it, find your games, give me some random logic. Haha. So it'd be exactly right. 91 Biles was big that that then price Baba, a very good friend now, he was also starting up. And my smart price was a funded startup from Helion and Excel. So
00:33:49
Speaker
Mukula Rota probably contacted me again on the hindsight I'm guessing because my smart price had just got funded, right? So every analyst at every VC fund generally gets curious, right? You scope your funding, let's talk to competitors and figure out the market, right? All this advice were bang on. Small market, you are trying to do too many things, et cetera, et cetera. First put your job, then start thinking about startup. But whatever, maybe I did not know how to take that advice.
00:34:15
Speaker
In 2012, 13 August, I had some 5 lakh rupees in the bank. And I met my investor again, he said, I'll give you 10 lakh rupees more, if you can pull it off fine, otherwise we shut down.
Pivot and Profitability of FindYogi
00:34:28
Speaker
And from there, the turnaround happened. From 20,000 to 10 lakh, we went every subsequent month, we doubled our revenue. 20,000, 60, 62, 80, Diwali month, we did 2 lakhs, 4 lakhs, 6 lakhs, 8 lakhs, 10 lakhs. And it continued. And from there on, we've been profitable throughout.
00:34:46
Speaker
2016 we exited that business and to a media company. They wanted to build an advertising system on top of it and all. We exited it to a media company, made some money around that time. Ziptile got acquired, free charge got acquired. So free charge and Ziptile's announcement was one week in difference, one week apart.
00:35:08
Speaker
Right. And I felt very bad here. I don't know the real numbers. The public number is 2700.
00:35:17
Speaker
Zimdiilma had some stake. So Zimdiilma had actually bargained my salary, you know, swapped it for ESOPs, you know, they've already given me ESOPs and for more, right? And that turned out well, made some money. No, not like a huge amount. Did you make more money through Zimdiil or through the sale of fine yogi? No, through sale of fine yogi. Zimdiil wasn't like a very large acquisition. And I had less than 1%. And I'd worked for less than two years there. So obviously,
00:35:45
Speaker
But had I stayed there, probably I would have gotten into Twitter. So I got inspired by Twitter and back to Twitter. It could have been a nice thing. But maybe I wouldn't have gotten into Twitter because they were very strict with respect to who they take in. Not every incident I would employ, but I'm sorry. And they don't have much in India now. So India is a productive product. Yeah.
00:36:08
Speaker
So, again, in 2016, I exited fine degree around that time. Confidence was very, very low. But why was confidence low? I mean, you made decent money from that exit. Well, as a woman of confidence, I think that money confidence of exiting fine degree was still there. But the fact that in the last four years, my career was going down.
00:36:30
Speaker
Okay. You saw free charge, you saw zip dial and then comparison, man. I used to see housing.com had launched around that time, you know, when I was still doing find your way. And you know, I was like, yeah, I know every startup on earth, right? And the first thing I hear about housing.com is this fancy office and Rahul Yadav, the founder of housing, he was on my Facebook because he tried to start a free charge competitor.
00:36:56
Speaker
And that is how we were connected and somehow. And one time I see this startup posting fancy photos of their office. I'm like, wow. And then I saw Tiny Owl and these guys were running out of Hiranandani. And I'm like, right? Because, you know, people were just starting out as starting out of offices in Hiranandani. Kunal had invested in 2015, features were required after a few months, but I had invested in Tiny Owl. What was Tiny Owl?
00:37:26
Speaker
Yes. And, you know, multiple stuff again were happening in the startup. Well, this is where all this fancy money had started flowing. 2015 was the peak of e-commerce, right? And one reason that I exited FindYogi was also because the revenue was winding down after that time, because, you know, PTM stopped paying us affiliate revenue. And, you know, the stamping said no affiliate revenue. Flipkart was trying to restrict the revenue, et cetera. We realized that nothing is another control.
00:37:54
Speaker
So, that is where we started looking out. And Punal used to call me up sometimes, you know, during all this time, right. And he used to say, right. And I realized, you know, I was carried away with this Bangalore circle and Bangalore thing. Bangalore made a hypothetical imagination like India and you know, they have their own version of how user behavior is, right. Very, if you've lately seen photos of Indira Nagar, etc, right.
00:38:22
Speaker
and you realize there are certain markets that exist in Bangalore, there are certain markets that exist in India Nagar that does not exist in Bangalore and certain markets that exist in Bangalore that does not exist in India.
00:38:35
Speaker
especially consumer stuff.
Reflections on Bangalore's Ecosystem
00:38:37
Speaker
And they still get funded because initially they have great numbers to show. So again, Ola, and these again were founders. So Ola, I remember, I was with Bhavish in one of the NASFOM events in 2011, November. I was a volunteer from Ziptal's end and Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bhavish was there and he was like, yeah, Bh
00:39:05
Speaker
Right. And he's something right. And Vap would, the Vap site side would. And, you know, he said, and we were generally talking, and, you know, Oyo's founder was there. Sorry, I forgot his name. Ritesh, Ritesh was there. So Ritesh was this, you know, very popular kid in the block, you know, and I had a friend who used to run an Airbnb kind of business. And he introduced me to Ritesh saying, you know, he's trying to build something, etc. And Ritesh was still 19 back then. Babish was, you know, something.
00:39:35
Speaker
You know, and I was also influenced by that to start up. This was in 2011 in Zebrail. And then 13, I had heard of other startups, then 14 other startups and 15 major free charge acquisition. But then I thought, you know, I've lost the board. Flipkart was now a unicorn, right? Because, you know, and I got an offer to join Flipkart, but I'd never joined that. I'd met the Zumato founders also, right? So as like, he had got left out. Okay.
00:40:02
Speaker
In 2015, when I made my first money from the Ziptile exit, to fight this FOMO of, you know, left out, right, I started investing in startups. Okay, so I had this Bombay Vala cousin, you know, IIT Bombay cousin, he just started up, put in a very, very small, tiny amount of money in his startup. And then I started working on another idea, I thought subscription business is going to be big. And then, you know, diaper subscription or milk subscription or stuff like that.
00:40:28
Speaker
So I was discussing with this guy whose company just got acquired by BigBasket. Can we start together, et cetera? And he came from, at that moment, I was taking very sound decisions. I was like, I have to select my partner as well, et cetera. Started discussing this idea with him. He came from a very strong FNCG background, et cetera. We were not still like, we're not saying we are doing together something, but we're still discussing ideas. Then I said, I'll do this. Milk delivery startup. Milk is a foot in the door. And we will deliver more stuff on top of that.
00:40:56
Speaker
And the idea again, for me, it was like, you know, recharge was a foot in the door and we will do retail coupons. In the same way, milk is the foot in the door. Before sleeping, people will use our app. And before they wake up, we'll have a physical delivery at their house. That was the idea. I tried to hire this guy. I interviewed in Zibail days for an internship. I tried signal with you to become the operations manager. He said, I've heard of this idea. Next venture, we live a deal. So there was a startup called daily ninja. I think it was 10 PM. I looked up the next venture.
00:41:26
Speaker
At 10.30, I ping the founder 11 o'clock at night, I spoke to him. Next day at 10.30, I met the other founder in Bombay, in Bangalore. I committed to invest. Okay, small amount. This investment wasn't out of FOMO. I'm like, this is the idea that will fly. I'm still thinking of this idea. These guys already have 200 customers, right? And Akurmaya had already committed a taxi for Shell founder. He just got an exit from Ola. Right? So, I'm not the only one thinking about this.
00:41:53
Speaker
and I invested to, committed to invest from, yeah, so 2016 we went. So daily ninja founders introduced me to a restaurant guy. Again, these guys were supplying breakfast on daily ninja.
00:42:08
Speaker
He said, you should meet. I met them. And because of my dad's experience from the restaurant industry in childhood, you know, I was like the restaurant industry and whatever. And I, again, I think every techie in Bangalore wants to start a cafe. There are some businesses where you can see everything through and through, right? Like there's a kitchen, there's somebody cooking, there is a building counter and people think they can start up. And I wasn't one of those who thought I'll start a cafe, but I thought, you know,
00:42:37
Speaker
I'll start maybe putting some money. I discussed this with my father and my brother. So every investment that we've done, we've done it like a family, not like an individual decision. I think daily ninja was one startup that everybody believed in the family. And I still can't fathom the outcome. I got acquired by big basket, not a great financial outcome. I multiplied my money by a couple of times, but I still think it was a very big idea.
00:43:07
Speaker
very, very efficient idea. And, you know, businesses will come back to it, right? A daily delivery to your home that carries everything, you know, from your Amazon order to your Flipkart order, to your grocery, everything. And it happens in the VR so that the guy is not stuck in traffic. So still think there is a game for that. Maybe Swiggy will capture that. Okay. So daily ninja computer. Big basket is also doing it. Exactly. So big basket acquired daily ninja. And, you know, that is where it started.
00:43:33
Speaker
So the restaurant guy introduced me, I invested in that restaurant. It ultimately shut down because of an accident. But nice experience there. Again, this restaurant guy introduced me to another founder who is now almost a unicorn now. I invested in that also. Now this founder has introduced me to another startup. So every founder started introducing and slowly I'd made about 16 investments.
Personal Reflections and New Beginnings
00:43:57
Speaker
So 2016 to 18, I moved back to Surat.
00:44:03
Speaker
So, you know, we also had our son born around that time. So, we knew that, you know, some of Bangalore's are disconnected. Also that I've seen my downfall in career. I wasn't very, you know, really good about it. I generally thought that Munal was right. Okay, about, you know, having great user insights and, you know,
00:44:26
Speaker
actually understanding a product and user and market. Bangalore was like that. I still remember I was with a very very learned guy and in 2015 he was telling me that stamp deal would win the e-commerce game and not flipkart.
00:44:45
Speaker
because Snapdeal is a asset light business, right? And it's a fancy words there, you know, everything coming from valley and people thought, you know, valley is the place where I am, asset light is the thing. India might call me asset light when I'm assisting. Right, right. And in India, we don't know examples of many asset light. I mean, Swiggy really have restaurants running for them, right? And a research lab producing new kind of foods, right? So asset light is the place where I am in India.
00:45:11
Speaker
But, you know, and there are multiple such incidents where I thought there is some disconnect. And also for personal reasons, I just moved to Surat. And so during my fine yogi days, one fine day I got contacted by this guy called Mohi Jan. We were connected on Facebook and LinkedIn all this while. And we'd met in high school days in Kota. So he was from Kota. In my coaching class, he'd come one day. We played cricket for some time. And he said, you know, I'm rapping at my startup. Do you have something for me?
00:45:45
Speaker
And I'm like, but I'll give you whatever you need to survive in Bangalore. He asked for a very, very small amount. Then we finally gave a little higher amount.
00:45:54
Speaker
We started taking over every responsibility in the company, right? And slowly, I think we were then equal partners, right? And when the exit happened, we split the money in that ratio. So he worked for two years for FindOB, I worked for four years, and we split the money in that ratio. And then that was right. Anyways, you know, because founder, no founder doesn't matter.
00:46:16
Speaker
So, 2016 onwards started consulting few startups and 17 I moved to Surat and had this mind here, if I get some money in through consultancy, I can slowly move to Surat and then figure out.
Building Reference: A SaaS for Services
00:46:30
Speaker
started working with a lot of startups. So my gate was one of the startups I was helping and some offline companies, online companies, et cetera. Then we started slowly realizing this whole market around freelancers and agencies. So I was helping a lot of founders, you know, strongly agencies for PR, for hiring, et cetera. We thought there is a gap. We started building and then this whole, you know, reference.com was bought. And so this was 2018, 19 Caspas.
00:46:56
Speaker
And we started working on this idea. So idea initially was very simple. List a lot of agencies on this platform and we'll start generating leads. What kind of like service businesses? Yeah. So very broad, anything that is a B2B service. So the way we like to see it is if you are a business and you are paying an invoice, you're paying only for two reasons, either procurement of raw material or procurement of service. Okay.
00:47:19
Speaker
Now, we want to do everything in procurement of service. Logo design, say, towards investment banking, call center hiring, recruiters, everything. There is some common behavior between them. A, we think it cannot be a vertical platform, where it is a platform only for hiring designers, only for programmers. These will become more of a
00:47:38
Speaker
like a internally sub-contracting kind of stuff where an agency gets some work and then they subcontract it to a developer. If you do a vertical platform, it will be more like that. If you see what happens on Dribbble. I have not heard of Dribbble. If you're a small shop owner, you've probably never heard of Dribbble. Dribbble is for designers, right? But Dribbble is where all the designers hang out. It's like an artwork, like a freelance. No, it's not like an artwork. No, no, no. It's not a freelancing platform. It's where they showcase their work.
00:48:06
Speaker
Exactly. So, Behance is owned by Adobe and Dribbble is an independent company. So, again, because you are from the industry, never heard of Dribbble or Dribbble, but again, it's a popular thing. So, this is where our thought process was that vertical platforms will not work for end client, it has to be horizontal. When we say vertical platforms, it's almost like saying, urban company for carpenters only. You'll probably need it once in six years, or for acquisitions only once in a year. It has to be a horizontal platform to
00:48:35
Speaker
justify the frequency of usage. We started building on that. Today, we have about 50,000 users on that platform. Why should a vendor, a service provider sign up?
00:48:50
Speaker
Okay. So the initial idea was very simple that we'll give them a listing platform and, you know, people would sign up and then traffic would come in through SEO. Okay. So like free leads. Yes. Yes. Okay. Like, like a India, but, but for services. That idea lasted exactly three weeks, you know, launched here 500 registrations way. And in the next two weeks, we realized that nobody's coming back. We went back to drawing board. We looked at how LinkedIn did it. So LinkedIn had a similar problem. People would sign up.
00:49:18
Speaker
and then forget about it for two, three years. And LinkedIn went this whole content way saying, you know, we'll congratulate your colleague on promotion and congratulate your colleague on work anniversary, etc. We thought it has to be more tool driven.
00:49:32
Speaker
Right. And we started looking for tools that these, these people need. And we zeroed in on the vendors, tools that vendors need. Okay. Yes, vendors need. Right. So invoice generation was a tool that everybody needs, right? Whether you are a small local designer working out of a college, if you are servicing a business, you must submit an invoice. And these people don't look for invoicing software. They look for invoice generator, like a PDF generator.
00:49:56
Speaker
Ah, like a template that they can just fill out. Yes, Excel sheet, we'll download Excel sheet template from the net, convert into PDF and send it out. We thought we can make it better on the web, keep records and send reminders, et cetera. So that was version one of the product. And, you know, three, four months into the product, we raised some funding. Again, this funding was from people we'd known over the years. So Vijay invested finally, and
Growth and Adaptation During the Pandemic
00:50:23
Speaker
A couple of more people, Anupam Mehtal of shaghi.com. First check was the micro VC who was leading it. Wooning.com founders and Park Plus founders and others. So a lot of people that I'd known over the years or one guy connected to another and that is how it happened. And we started building a small team in Bangalore and then pandemic hit. So this is 2020, January is when we closed the funding and pandemic hit and we went all remote.
00:50:48
Speaker
It's been almost two years now. So that time when you raised funding, how many vendors did you have? About 500. 500 users on the platform in all. I think people were just betting. Vendors and buyers. No, there were no buyers. So what we are only focusing on is the Shopify kind of platform. Focusing on giving tools and platform to the sellers, not to the buyers. We're not focused on the buyers. I think that's at least one or one and a half years away on the platform.
00:51:17
Speaker
So just collecting that mass of vendors right now. I think we are about two years into the journey. Like after the funding, it's been two years, otherwise almost three years now. And right now we are just closing our another round of funding. Seed or a series effort? No, this is not a series effort. This is like a seed with round and popular founders again joining in.
00:51:44
Speaker
And 15 people team right now. So from that 500, what is the number today? Registered base is a little over 1 lakh. And active users, we see about 25 to 30,000 active users any time on the platform. And what is the value proposition for them? So right now, it's basically a SaaS suite, saying you need bookkeeping, you need management system and you need CRM system.
00:52:13
Speaker
Some of these tools, large businesses and agencies are already using. Small businesses don't realize that these tools could be helpful for them because they don't even know what an MS means or what a CRM means, right? We are building those tools for them. The ultimate idea is that it will be a Zoho books, Zoho works like the whole Freshworks and Zoho kind of platform, plus the LinkedIn for freelancers. So it will be a networking platform and the whole SaaS suit for freelancers and agencies. And do you monetize right now?
00:52:44
Speaker
Yes, we monetize. So we are covering about 50% of our costs through the revenue. So we're working more like a premium plan where 95% of the users are free, 5% of us are the users paid. So what do they pay for? Like what is in the paid plan? So some of the features are locked, right? Say customization of the invoice, read, receipt, whether your client opened the invoice or not.
00:53:04
Speaker
and schedule this invoice for future etc. So, a lot of vanity features, we still want the people to use it whether they pay us or not and this is again global. So, today about 32 percent of our audience comes from outside India and our growth outside of India is faster than India.
00:53:21
Speaker
So ultimately, I think you'll have the idea is to create this whole ecosystem for business service providers, right? So, you know, SaaS suit, payments and networking. And in payments, we are going very strong. We've just started our international payment. So move money from anywhere to anywhere in the world. And in most country combinations, we are the cheapest option.
00:53:41
Speaker
You can bill your client in any country. I am in India. I can bill a US client through reference. Yes, and collect payment through reference, whether it's a credit card payment or a bank transfer payment. For the guy paying, it would be like a local bank transfer, but we'll move the money to India and pay it to you, through our legal means, et cetera. And this is for any country combination. So Vietnam means freelancer can receive money from a US-based client. So that we've done. And the idea is to grow this for the next six to eight months, very aggressively.
00:54:11
Speaker
and then raise a larger round where we take the product more international. So I think until now, whatever international users we are getting, it's all organic. A lot of word of mouth growth, et cetera, a lot of content marketing.
00:54:25
Speaker
But that is where we'll go very, very aggressive on marketing. And users from India, how are you acquiring them? Content marketing mix of SEO, SEM, word of mouth. And we have some very, very popular users. As in, we have some big Bollywood celebrities. We have big YouTube stars. I think the biggest YouTube star today in India is our users. So we did all those things. So they use you for their invoicing to the brands who
00:54:52
Speaker
like brands who want them to do placement. The idea is if they can start using this for the networking product. The idea with networking is every freelancer knows other freelancers in the ecosystem. And these freelancers actually act like a way of getting leads. So a designer would generate lead for a front-end developer. And that is how the whole industry flows. So if they can network and look at each other's work,
00:55:19
Speaker
On LinkedIn, people are not showcasing their work. People are giving all sides of GAN, which is nice, but work is not being displayed. And when I say work, I don't mean to say that, OK, I'm a CMO of this company. What I mean to say is, this is the project that I did in the last one month. And these are my learnings. These are the tools that I used, et cetera. And the idea is to become the default identity of these business service providers on the internet, whether they use it like reference.com slash naman or naman.com should be the same thing.
00:55:47
Speaker
Right. We might end up- So you allow that white labeling also? Yes, in the next three weeks. So it's life for me and my co-founder right now, not for others. And another three to four weeks, we will be like that. This will obviously be a paid feature. Yes, this will be a paid feature. This will be a paid feature. And then we'll start competing with likes of VIX and Webflow.
00:56:07
Speaker
and which we think will be the default identity. What is the current user experience like? So if I am, let's say, running a service business, what will be my experience when I sign up? What all do I get access to? Help me understand the product.
00:56:25
Speaker
So, we say bookkeeping system and not accounting system, ok. So, we think tally is used by your CA to know the compliance related stuff, but as an entrepreneur you might be creating those invoices and sending out to your client or your sales team doing it.
00:56:38
Speaker
So, or, you know, so invoices, quotations, pro forma invoices, those kinds of stuff that a sales team or an entrepreneur uses. Record your leads and manage your sales flow. What does, what does it, what does the look and feel like of it? Like when I sign up? So it's like a website app. It's like a website app. Okay. Very similar to, you know, when you look at it at once, it will look like any other bookkeeping tool, like QuickBooks or Soho books, et cetera. Okay. Just that the experience is inverted. So you start by creating your first invoice and not by signing up.
00:57:08
Speaker
In that invoice, we think most of the other people who are making such tools, there is a 15 minutes of onboarding time. You sign up, you create your business, you create your invoice. We start with creating your invoice, and then we just ask you to save the invoice. That becomes your user account. The details on your invoice become your business details.
00:57:27
Speaker
So we've just inverted that thing. And that is why the friction is very less. And we still think freelancers... You are leveraging that pain point to get user sign up. Instead of forcing a user to sign up first, you're saying, here's the solution. And when they do the solution, use the solution, then that gets created into a sign up.
00:57:46
Speaker
So I think... But so it looks like a tally or a fresh book or one of those quick books. Lighter than that. Lighter than that. First look obviously, it's like a compliance software. So it cannot look much different from their peers. How does it take care of the social element, the showing your portfolio element? I would have thought that it would look more like LinkedIn. Those are the things that we're building out. So as I said, we're focusing on the SaaS platform, the whole tool suite and the payments bid for now.
00:58:15
Speaker
The networking will be launching in another six weeks and give ourselves another six months to grow this. But the idea is we already know a lot about who you are working for. We just want you to make that public. So we already have about 25,000 public profiles on the system where people are publishing who they worked up for and those details.
00:58:36
Speaker
And we have some insights about what should be shown on a profile. If you look at large agencies, they try to showcase a lot of social signals. And they say how many testimonials and who they work for, how many years in business, et cetera. When you talk to a newbie in this industry, they will try to showcase the nuances of their skill set.
00:58:57
Speaker
Now, we think the clients don't have the understanding or they don't have the intellect to understand your profession. And whether again, it's an investment banker or a local designer, they want to understand who you work for. So a portfolio is the first thing you ask. Who have you worked for? Do I know somebody you've worked for? And that is what we want to showcase on the system and showcase it in a way that can be really comprehended by the potential client.
00:59:26
Speaker
Otherwise, it's just a blue link on Just Dial. I mean, you look for CAs in Bangalore, and you'll get hundreds of pages of Just Dial. You don't know one from the another. So I think we are trying to fight that thing. And if your website has to
00:59:44
Speaker
be live and updated, it should actually get you more clients. Today that I think even agencies host their own website, the discoverability is very low, completely dependent on Google. And even when they get discovered, they are mostly outdated. We hired a designer here, we created the website, now we don't know how to update the website. So we are fighting all those stuff where we will nudge you when to update the website.
01:00:09
Speaker
And we'll take some hard measures saying we'll, you know, de-list you from the discovery system if you don't update your website. Those kind of stuff. Then there is some CRM system being built in where we'll broadcast your work to a lot of other people saying, you know, Akshay is this guy, he does such fantastic work for these companies.
Future Plans for Reference
01:00:27
Speaker
Maybe you want to hire them or maybe just you want to just know about them.
01:00:29
Speaker
So B2B sales is a lot of about, you know, relation building. Is it like a, do you currently have a, like a CRM tool live yet or it's in the works? It's in the works. It's in the works with the whole broadcasting thing and all that is the thing we are working on. So the profiles as a standalone page is life. One profile is not connected to another. So those are the features that we are now trying to build upon.
01:00:53
Speaker
But the CRM tool would be something that I can use as a replacement of, say, like a pipe driver. The ultimate idea is that both pre-sales like a sales CRM and post-sales like a marketing CRM where you communicate with your existing clients. So again, the idea is to create that whole ecosystem, do payments for them. When we start doing payments, it opens up a whole new opportunity. Because again, this audience is somebody who's ignored by the current banking system.
01:01:21
Speaker
If you're earning 25,000 rupees as an Infosys employee, you can get a credit card. But as a freelancer, almost impossible. So we want to tap into that, get a lot of knowledge about their income, etc.
01:01:33
Speaker
and then build upon tools further on that. And growing, we are growing. It's just that we think now we've cracked something, so we'll accelerate this. So what is the pricing like for the paid plan? So it's $30 in India right now, $90 in US annual subscription. $30 in Kitawar, rupee? $2,500, so $30 per annum. So monthly plans are at about 250 rupees.
01:01:58
Speaker
And Android is $2,500. And we keep a- And Ismail sub-included like white labeling, accounting, payment. So right now, whatever features are there, everything is included in this, but this will start increasing. So the ultimate idea is that we will, in the next one, one and a half years, the average pricing would be $150 per annum. A thousand rupees a year, you know, a thousand rupees a month. So $150 per annum. And that would be like our global average. Our global average today is about $50.
01:02:28
Speaker
And you can have like a login for your team members also as a business. Yes, that is still right. Like, is it meant for that size of business also? Yes, yes, yes. You can have different roles like you can have. Yeah, so that different roles is going live today, as we speak. So until now, everyone, so we imagine like equal partners logging into the system. But now we are like, you know, different access levels, etc. That will go live today. So we are thinking of this whole journey, right from a freelancer,
01:02:58
Speaker
where you only need a voice generator to now multi-people sales team, multi-founders, you know, agency of 50 people. We want to be with you throughout that journey, right? So when you're a freelancer, you will not pay us, but you know, maybe for payments, you know, we'll earn some revenue from you. As you grow, we'll start, you know, we'll have enough tools so that you pay us.
01:03:23
Speaker
So this becomes essentially the ERP for small business in a way, service businesses. Lead management, accounting, marketing, one-stop shop. And we are again imagining this in a way that the business owner is the guy using the software, right? I mean, he's the accountant.
01:03:44
Speaker
you know, and maybe he's also doing his own taxes at times. So we'll come to that also. And, you know, without payments, payments becomes an important thing, you know, you shouldn't go to the bank to do payments or, you know, international payments is a big thing. So he shouldn't be doing that, you know, signing papers, etc.
01:04:02
Speaker
Eventually you would also tie up and offer like loans, credit cards, all of these things with small business owners need. Like you could through collaborations start offering the whole suit. Yes. Right. So we've done some experiments with insurance.
01:04:18
Speaker
Not a very successful, you know, experiment, I would say, because insurance still requires a lot of phone calling, etc. It's not something that you can sell, you know, so, but insurance at the full product heaven, you know, probably credit card would be a bigger credit card. They're not enough, you know, the lot of players there, but not a lot of freelancers would qualify for such credit card. And the ones that qualify already have like better credit cards from the, you know, regular banks rather than the new aid startups.
01:04:46
Speaker
Because they've done jobs at some time and then become a freelancer now, so they still have better credit cards. So, how big do you think this business will get to? Do you see it becoming 100 million revenue, like an ARR by wind?
01:05:05
Speaker
March 26 is the target that I've been set internally. 1 million paying users, average giving us about $400. $150 for the SaaS suit and $250 additional in payments and other stuff. So in payments also you earn some transaction revenue. In payments we earn transaction revenue, we earn higher if you collect payments through credit card.
01:05:28
Speaker
there is revenue to be made in, again, lending systems after the payment has come in. And once we start generating leads for you, then there is more money to be made. And there are other things to receive. Once you capture this audience, this whole ecosystem of freelancers and agencies, there are multiple stuff that can be done with them. And we think each of these stuff will be like a $50 to $60 million revenue, annual revenue. But startups are not above that.
01:05:55
Speaker
I still say to a lot of founders, avoid raising funds as far as possible. I mean, maybe the amount of money that the business will make will be same. You will just have to share it with more people. And maybe you don't want to take all those partners on board. And I can only say this after... No, so you don't lose control actually. Honestly, you know, most investors don't even pay attention.
01:06:20
Speaker
I do not know if you followed what happened in India Plaza right, the day it started going down the investor directors they resigned.
01:06:29
Speaker
So, the founder was on his own. So, loose control, Balochis, I think we've not seen it at least till now. This was a thing, I've not even seen with other founders where they say, okay, I got kicked out of my startup or something. These were stories that would happen in 2013, 14, 15, not now. It's just that you lose interest of the investor. If that happens to you, then you are in trouble. Because the next round investor is going to ask you if this current guy is participating or not. Or if this current guy is taking enough interest to introduce you to new people.
01:06:59
Speaker
So, again, that's one side, but you have to just realize that, you know, once you get VC funded, the journey never ends. You have to keep innovating every year, come out with news for every year.
01:07:10
Speaker
and the day you stop doing that on internet, you die. So we've seen what happened with Just Die, right? They never invested in any startup. They weren't growing as fast. I mean, the market was moving in a certain direction.
Insights on the Startup Ecosystem
01:07:20
Speaker
A lot of talent comes in in a startup through acquisitions, right? So they were not doing that. Now it's almost an insignificant thing, right? Whereas you look at noppre.com or India Mart, they've been actively investing from their profits, right? So they'll continue to stay. So even if their core business won't grow as fast,
01:07:38
Speaker
Or there's not much innovation to be done in the whole business. There will still be a strong organization that will be built. And the founder's knowledge will still be used in other places to create that enterprise value. But otherwise, if you think there's a really small thing to be done, just stay private. And it's OK to stay private. And probably you will make more money than most Bangalore startup founders make. This doesn't come out in the open. But I have a good friend based in Ahmedabad.
01:08:09
Speaker
He takes some very serious amount of money, 100% owner of the company, very good friends with all the startup founders. And he's actually taken this decision like very consciously saying I will not raise funds because there is not much to share with the investor.
01:08:27
Speaker
And I told you my experience with FindYogi, my pricing there. Had I done this as a personal project, I would have probably made like 10 to 15 lap rupees every month. And that's a great amount of money at $23, $24. But just because I got into this whole track here, Fundraiz is going to new investors in Milan. And it's a very, very time taking thing. As in in the whole four years journey of that startup, I would have spent about one year of energy in Fundraiz.
01:08:56
Speaker
Because you are in the market, people will ping you, right? And then you want to meet them, right? And every VC analyst wants to meet you. Or now it's gotten even easier, right? People just do a Zoom call. They don't even need to travel. So you have lesser friction to say no, and they have lesser friction to say no. So, but you don't realize, but I think only lately I've started saying no to a few meetings, you know, but otherwise I would still get carried away because then it comes as a ray of hope, right?
01:09:27
Speaker
So, I think very, very time taking stuff that you should avoid. And you know it. I mean, in the first meeting, you know here what is wrong. You are just trying to convince that guy for no reason. That guy will not understand because in the same day he has 10 more meetings. Attention span is very less. In the first five minutes, whether you can explain it or not explain it. And if you are trying to sell a new industry to them, again, a very big problem. So, VC money is great.
01:09:54
Speaker
if your business has that potential to actually digest that kind of money. Otherwise, I think there was this grocery delivery company after raising CDC. They went out in public saying that we are still trying to figure out our business model. I don't know. I mean, it's tragic or it's funny. I don't know. And this happens with a lot of people. They're just good at raising money. But the end outcome is very, very sad. People go into depression. They really need medical help after that.
01:10:24
Speaker
Or they take up some some job somewhere that they're not happy about. In very rare cases, you know, you're just happy, okay, I tried, I failed, now let's move on. That's a little rare thing. People leave country now because as a face saver. And this all gets accelerated if you are in the limelight, if you're in public, if you raised a lot of money. So I think it should not happen.
01:10:50
Speaker
See, the whole startup industry, it's actually designed for the VCs. If you look at it, we talk about funding news. We rarely talk about profit news. So it's designed for the VCs. And rightly so, because they have a show to run. They have a business to run for themselves. They are the ones sponsoring the media companies, et cetera. But otherwise, I think, again, it's OK to not raise funds if your idea is not that big. And you still make that much money, as most founders make.
01:11:19
Speaker
and maybe have a more peaceful life. But if you think the idea is as big, then go all in. And if you fail, you fail. It's a great learning thing. I mean, I would have been that guy in that tier three college taking up a job at Vipro. And I don't know whether I would have felt good or maybe go back to my dad's business of making sardines. I think this journey just teaches you more than any other kind of work can teach you, with or without the VC money.
01:11:47
Speaker
As long as you are in the thick and thin of what you are building, it will all be good.