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Perspectives: India’s innovation boom
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The journey to building a million-dollar company is often seen as a mix of a great idea, smart people, and a bit of luck. Anand Jain, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of CleverTap, joins Jonathan Yip, Head of Innovation Banking, Asia, HSBC to offer a deeper insight. Their discussion delves into the complexities of entrepreneurship, the pivotal moments in CleverTap's journey, and the broader implications for startups in the region.
This episode was recorded in Mumbai during the launch of HSBC Innovation Banking in India on October 7, 2025.
Disclaimer: Views of external guest speakers do not represent those of HSBC.
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Transcript
Introduction and Launch of HSBC Innovation Banking
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
00:00:12
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes. Thanks for listening, and now onto to today's show.
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm Jonathan Yip, Asia head of HSBC Innovation Banking. Today we're recording this episode from Mumbai, where we recently celebrated the launch of HSBC Innovation Banking in India.
SaaS Success Story: Clevertap with Anand Jain
00:00:33
Speaker
Joining me today is Anand Jain, co-founder of Clevertap, one of India's most remarkable SaaS success stories in recent years. Anand, welcome to the show.
00:00:44
Speaker
Thank you for having me and congratulations on the launch. Thank you. It was incredible energy. We had 200 to 300 founders joining us and it was an incredible success and and thank you for the kind words.
00:00:55
Speaker
So I wanted to start off with the origin of your story and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what was the spark behind Clevertap. We noticed that every message, every recommendation to the user was you know didn't make any sense at all. right It was not contextual and not tied to what the user would do on those properties, right? Like if you did X, you would might not receive something like you know that's meant for that for you. And then you know as engineers, we kind of wanted to go down to the root of like, know hey, why is this happening?
00:01:23
Speaker
um And we realized that you know the the the brands, like you know they collect a lot of user information, right? All the digital footprints. But it's very hard for them to marry what the user did like you know with actually the communication or the personalization. And it is because they end up using like seven to eight different tools. like you know So you might have a you know a vendor for email, you might have another vendor sending SMSs, you might have third vendor like you know doing product A-B testing on your website. And this data would be you know ah spread across multiple data silos.
00:01:56
Speaker
ah And I think that like kind of gave us a spark like you know to start CleverTap. Creating some organization around the different data feeds that are coming in Exactly, right?
Challenges in Customer Journey and Early Adoption
00:02:06
Speaker
What if you could kind of put all this data in one place right and use this as a single source of truth for activating this data in real time? And I think the product philosophy was not to build just a dashboard where you can look at the numbers, but it can actually respond to user behavior in real time.
00:02:24
Speaker
When you brought that idea up from just conception to just mobilizing it, what were some of the early pain points that that you had to navigate through? Yeah, in the early days, that it was very hard for us to go convince businesses because they were so used to this idea of of buying like you seven, eight products. you know the The email team would buy like an email product, like you know the the product team would buy some sort of a recommendation engine. And it was very hard for us to go ah preach this idea that you know you could you should go in and you know like you should look at this as as a unified customer journey. like you know Your customer doesn't care what products they're using behind the scenes. So that was a little hard for us, but I think we got lucky. like you know We had a couple of very early pilots. Those customers saw the benefit of using a unified platform.
00:03:10
Speaker
And did you find those customers first or did you build the solution first? We actually started building the solution because you know ah you know this is my my third startup. Phenomenal. You get a little bit carried away like you i thinking, hey, I know the answer. But very quickly you start you know like when you find that customer. like know So we had this like a little bit built up. like you know We started showing around the product.
00:03:32
Speaker
Whatever the product in that form and shape was. And then we got you know someone interested in in that Book My Show is the name of the customer. Book My Show? Book My Show. They're in the movie you know so movie ah ticketing as well as events. and that's That's a big customer. how how did that tell Tell us a little bit about how you felt when you landed that client.
00:03:51
Speaker
it was It was, I think I felt a lot of responsibility like, you know, like, hey, this is such a big customer. How do I get them to, you know, use my product in the right way? And I think they were sold on the philosophy like, you know this makes complete sense. Like, you know, hey, one single source of truth for all customer data. And the ability to send you back communication, you know, in response to what you came looking for, right, makes complete sense. So how do we, you know, so they got convinced.
00:04:15
Speaker
ah Implementation of course was like you know it took us like a couple of weeks. No actually yeah it was was pretty quick actually. A couple of weeks and we were rolling you know in their production systems but then right after that you feel immense responsibility like know hey I i hope that we don't screw up anything for them. Very early days for us. I think that journey like you know for for them, like you know where a couple of product managers used to watch the dashboard maybe once a week, like and know around the you know the the weekend you know when the movies kind of, you know people go and watch movies, all the way to you using it for all seven days, like you know there are multiple teams, Product teams, engineering teams, marketing teams, growth teams, BI teams, all looking at the same sort of data. And then I think they you know like they had a great experience. And was it that moment that created the validation that you had something that the market would really, um really admire and and and you had a solution that could really take off?
00:05:08
Speaker
I think the validation for us was probably customer number four, because it may work for one, it may not work for the second. So you have three or four customers in parallel using your product and just trying out the same solution, same products, you're not customizing for them.
00:05:25
Speaker
you're co-creating with them, right? And the difference is that you're you're listening to one customer, like, you know understand, like, what their problems are, et cetera. You abstract it up, and then you build something that works for all four of them. And we were very lucky to get customers across different domains, right? And that, like, after four or five of those, like, you know, we felt confident that we have achieved product market fit. Oh, phenomenal.
India's Tech Ecosystem and Clevertap's Growth
00:05:47
Speaker
And were these four customers from India? Yes, they were. and And what was so special about India that made your product work and allowed you to take it global? Yeah, when we started in 2013, it was pretty audacious for us to think about building something from India and then scaling it globally. But I'll tell you what worked for the India ecosystem, what worked for us, right? These were early days for the mobile ecosystem.
00:06:10
Speaker
The sub-$100 Android devices, you know, made it possible for a large population to not only get the phones and use them for, you know, just using the apps, but also made it like a part of the lifestyle, right?
00:06:23
Speaker
especially on the banking side, etc. So you get like a vast playground like you know where you have multiple ah several hundreds of millions of users like and are using consumer products. right You have ah different kind of, like India is a diverse country, like you know so you have diversity of language, but you also have diversity of device form factors, you have diversity of network connection, all sorts of things like you know the language barrier. right So that gave us the confidence to go spread this.
00:06:51
Speaker
I think also around that time, The India stack, if I can call it that, like an around payments, yeah a UPI, other, all of these things were coming together. Let's talk a little bit about that, because for the international audience, people don't understand you know how much progress India has made in the last 10 years. and And whether it's UPI and the tech stack and identification, maybe if you could just frame it. um Because I think it's really magical how you were able to take a solution and scale it across India before you're now scaling internationally.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, i mean the last decade in India has been phenomenal you know in terms of innovation not only for the consumer apps but also financial products. like you know Just by having a very simple unified payment interface like you know where you can just use you know like a very simple QR code, like you just scan it and you can pay without having to worry about what bank and you know like credit limits and and those kind of things. and right So ah this got created in the last decade. It has scaled now at a population level, like the population scale.
00:07:49
Speaker
There are multiple companies that take advantage of that. like you know there There are solutions built on top of the the UPI payment ecosystem. There is Aadhaar, which is like a unified biometric identification.
00:08:02
Speaker
ah for India. ah Then there is the Indian payment stack. There's a lot of B2B components kind of hidden, like you know not visible, but this entire infrastructure is is open, is interoperable, and like I said, it's modular. Massive scale. billion Billion people scale. yeah Yeah, so we've always been very impressed with India, you know, the ability to build the utility that brings the fabric of of commerce together, you know, the interoperability, you know, the modular kind of build, it really is ah is a collaboration between public and private enterprise and creating value. And um I can see why it's really allowed you to scale in this market.
00:08:39
Speaker
But as you're as you're thinking about internationally, how does that kind of play into your international ambitions and how do you take some of the good work that you've done here in India and apply it to different markets where it might not be structured in a similar way?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think scaling internationally is not just about taking the product you know to ah to an international market, but also doing an infrastructure fit. like you know The rules around data residency, privacy, consent, etc. might be different for every country. Then there are elements of localization.
00:09:10
Speaker
The language, while thankfully having this built Clevertap in India, we are used to multiple languages and different kind of diversity of devices and that. That's very good point. It helps us scale internationally, especially in countries like Europe and South America, where the local language is a very important flavor of how you do business.
00:09:30
Speaker
And then there are things like WhatsApp, it's probably dominant India. Now it's a global platform. Now it's a global platform, but five, seven years ago, it was not very, there were other platforms that you had to integrate with.
00:09:40
Speaker
And then providing local billing, local customer success team, which is a very important element. So you're not trying to service customers out of you know one geography, you're trying to give them in-region support. and in-region marketing, et cetera. That's how we scaled ClubberTap.
AI in Marketing and Clevertap's Future Vision
00:09:56
Speaker
How do you see your company in the next three to five years? and And I think I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on AI and how that integrates into your business model. Yeah, let's start with AI. you know I think ah especially last three years, like know the rise of like large language models, LLMs as we call them, and Gen AI solutions on top of that actually give truly liberates marketing. like ah you know and Most of the marketing platforms, like you know you can do a multivariate test, you can do like a product A, B test, you know a version A, version B, version C, and then you're kind of done. And you do targeted marketing, right? So you take a group of users and you send them a product.
00:10:33
Speaker
With AI, now you can actually send each person the product that might be the best fit for them in the language that works for them, with the creative that works for them. At the channel that works them. At the channel that works for the right time. And the time that works them. And also, like, you know, the right workflow for them. Like, you know, hey, should we send a couple of reminders? Should we just send once? Should we even send any message at all? So I think finally, like, you know, and and that's why it's very exciting for us, like, you know, at CleverTap, what we are building,
00:11:00
Speaker
you know in the next three to five years. Although ah my product team tells me that will be all done by early next year. The reality is like you know what we're building is you know like the the product will be outcome obsessed and the outcome for any business is ROI.
00:11:16
Speaker
right So given a goal of how ROI, like you know what are the various things I can do with my users, to make sure that whatever message I send to them, whatever like communication, or when they're on my app or my website, like it's completely personalized to their taste. It is built just for them.
00:11:31
Speaker
I just find it incredible. like you know As you're scaling this globally, you guys are effectively the brains behind you know customer satisfaction and value creation without anyone knowing. that you guys are behind it. Yeah, it's an immense responsibility for us also, right? So while we are growing along with like the rest of the the world economy, right? But making sure that our brands, like you know the brands that that work with us, my customers, like you know are getting an exponential value from my product. like you know They're using this product not just to kind of just you know what we call as you know batch and blast, but to do very meaningful customer engagement, going from just looking at installs or downloads to actually retention, like you how many of my users come back to me regularly, and even if they're not buying a product right now, but you know maintaining that loyalty or the relationship with the with the customer so that you know but they end up, like you know whenever they're ready to buy something, like and whenever whenever they're ready to renew the subscription, you know they do that.
00:12:27
Speaker
So it's immense responsibility. And as you guys get better, I'm assuming it's incredibly more difficult to to switch agents or switch brains. Yeah, I mean, that's not even the moat. I think the moat is you know winning customer trust. Even for us, like know retention is, as ah as a B2B business, retention is a main theme for us.
00:12:45
Speaker
ah We learn a lot from our customers, right? And we incorporate that into the product. So hence, that's the moment. Yes, exactly. that's Understand your customers and bring that into the business model. Yes. So that they see what they kind of, you know, like what my customers is looking for is what they get in the product. And, you know, frankly, like, you know, I mean, we are not in the consumer business, like, you know, but we learn a ton from ah different brands, like, you know, from banks, from retail, from streaming apps, food delivery, gaming.
00:13:13
Speaker
And all of this is kind of baked into the Cleveta product. Can I talk about your vision for your company over, let's let's not talk three, five years, let's talk 10 years. yeah What is CleverTap, if you were to summarize summarize that?
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, we arere kind of we want to become the the the central nervous system for any business. like Central nervous system. Yeah, you're processing customer data, you're ingesting, processing, and activating all of this in real time.
00:13:38
Speaker
like So much like a physical store, like and if you walk into a physical store, the the you know the the People who are in the store, they kind of know that you know someone just walked in. like you know or Or if you're at the checkout counter, they kind of see like you know you've got a like if shopping cart full of things and they might actually say, why don't you come over to aisle number four or till number four and then we'll we do the checkout for you like separately because you're just a large shopping order. So getting to like an extremely high level of personalization, we call this one is to one or hyper-personalization.
00:14:07
Speaker
right We even have a term for this, it's called individualization. Individualization. right Getting to that for all the brands. For all their customers. All their customers and just making it feel very, very natural, like no like like a good friend like and who knows you from before. right you know Showing you the right sizes for products that you buy, showing you right colors, and so on so forth. And it's a very good balance, right How do you balance trust with with customization, with privacy in the context of regulations? And it really sounds like you guys are are thinking about that all in the right way. And I can throw in a banking metaphor there, like, we are like a bank, like, know, we hold everything. You guys hold our money, like you know we hold like customers' data. right As the absolute uncompromised trust on that, like know there is no way that that can get compromised. like we ah From a security perspective, from a privacy perspective, and we are just custodians of the customer data, like know my customers' data, and they can use it for you know understanding the behavior and all that.
Conclusion and HSBC's Commitment to Innovation
00:15:03
Speaker
Well, Anand, that's extremely inspirational. I really wanted to thank you for joining us today and you know spending the time to have a conversation with us. HSBC Innovation Banking is is launched in India. We're super proud to support you guys. And you know we hope you guys continue to grow with much success around the world.
00:15:20
Speaker
hey Thank you for hosting me. It was a pleasure to chat with you. And I wish you all the best. I want to see a lot more of HSBC in India. Oh, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.
00:15:31
Speaker
So India, it's clear. 10 years ago, it was a high potential emerging market. Today, we see a confident, resilient, market-driven growth driver for the global innovation economy. At HSBC, we've allocated over a billion dollars to support the innovation ecosystem. We're so proud of the team that we have on the ground here, and I look forward to seeing you guys next time.
00:15:55
Speaker
Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint. We hope you enjoyed the discussion. Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.