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Never Quit | Ankit Prasad @ Bobble.ai
113 Plays3 years ago
Ever heard of the Japanese proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” That’s exactly the premise of the story of our guest on this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast.
In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Ankit Prasad, Founder, and CEO, Bobble AI, has shared interesting anecdotes about his early days and the journey of Bobble.
As he says, “Entrepreneurship ka keeda bachpan se he tha!”, Ankit started his first venture when he was in Standard 10th. He soon realized that the mobile space is growing exponentially and in 2015 he founded Bobble AI, an app that enabled users to turn their selfies into caricature stickers. Today, it has transitioned into a comprehensive camera, content, and keyboard app that not only lets users personalize their communication in 22 Indian languages but can also predict their actions with the help of AI.
Tune in to this episode to hear Ankit speak about how Bobble AI challenged the well-established keyboard apps by Google and Microsoft with technology-led innovations.
Key takeaways!
- Resilience is the key to success.
- Behavioral shift to non-text and personalized communication.
- How to scale up a B2B2C business?
- Plans for global expansion.
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Transcript
Introduction and Metaphorical Inspiration
00:00:00
Speaker
Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour. Take me on a tour.
00:00:34
Speaker
I am sure you have heard of the ant who climbed and fell 19 times only to finally reach the goal on the 20th attempt which inspired the ruler Taimur to conquer Delhi. This
Ankit Prasad's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:46
Speaker
metaphor also perfectly fits the protagonist of our podcast, Ankit Prasad.
00:00:51
Speaker
Unkit is the founder of Bobble.ai, which started live as a social media platform aspiring to become what Instagram is today, which then pivoted into the Bobble app that allowed users to create and share emojis on WhatsApp, which then morphed into a full-stack keyboard platform that today powers brands like Xiaomi and others to provide a superior typing experience to users while opening up a monetization stream for them.
00:01:20
Speaker
Today, Bobble is reportedly worth $100 million and within one year has grown its monthly revenue run rate to 10 times. Here's Ankit telling Akshay Dutt about growing up in Jamshedpur and his journey of building Bobble. Hi, I am Ankit Prasad, founder and CEO at Bobble AI. So Ankit, what is home for you? Like, where did you grow up?
00:01:49
Speaker
I grew up in a small city in Jharkhand. It's called Jamshedpur. Although I was born in Chai Basa, which is a small town nearby Jamshedpur. OK. Your father was in Tata? No. The stereotype in Jamshedpur, you think you are from Tata? So there is another important
00:02:17
Speaker
you know, organization in Jamshedpur, it's an IT Jamshedpur. So my father is a professor there. Ah, okay, okay, okay. So you grew up with a very strong academic focus, I guess. Being the son of a professor, I guess, so academics must have always been first priority. I won't say that I was fortunate to get the flexibility
00:02:45
Speaker
and independence to try out things that I love. And that also
Pivot to Mobile Innovation
00:02:50
Speaker
reflects on the fact that I had dropped out from my IIT Delhi engineering course, right, engineering degree. So there was no pressure at such from the family side. Well, have you slogged to get into IIT? I am sure of classes joined career only to clear the entrance and also
00:03:18
Speaker
Good question. I think entrepreneurship, in fact I started my first venture when I was in my class 10.
00:03:34
Speaker
And then IIT. It was a web design and development agency sort of a thing wherein we used to take projects from local hotels or, you know, in industrial town. So there are so many industries out there. We used to take local projects and design and develop
00:04:04
Speaker
and maintain websites for them. OK. And Madhav, this was like very clearly just a pocket money gig. You thought, if you go back to India, you'll be there. I was pretty serious about it. Until I got into IIT Delhi and got real exposure of product startups, which were creating much larger impact, I realized
00:04:33
Speaker
The service business I was onto, probably that was not matching with my aspirations and goals. So IIT, you were doing both here. You were studying also, and you were still running this web development business. I was running this web development business. In fact, I got a lot of clients from IIT, because there were so many other startups which were getting launched during that time. I'm talking about 2008, 2009, 2010 times.
00:05:02
Speaker
And everybody needed some sort of help on technology side, product development, software, et cetera. And I
Challenges and Innovations in Emoji Sharing
00:05:11
Speaker
was able to provide those services, and I was happy about it. I used to think of myself as a smarter person. You got into IT in 2008. That was the year you joined. That's right. I used to think that the other people who are doing startups might fail.
00:05:31
Speaker
But I am making my money by providing them the service. But then eventually, I was proved wrong. People created the likes of Zomato and Flipkart. And I was still doing the service business. Did you work with any of these? Which were some of the companies that you built software for? Yes, I worked with many, actually. I don't know if.
00:05:59
Speaker
All the names I should be able to take, but all the major startups, you know, the ones who are successful and who are and who got shut down, both kind of startups. I played a significant role as an intern or as an initial technology team member or as a consultant. Yeah, so that gave me the exposure to start on my own.
00:06:29
Speaker
And when did you start, like eight of me joined here? Well, I joined various tech startups during that time, worked with them, learned the dynamics of startup ecosystem, the fundraisers, et cetera. It was new to me. It was new to most of the people in India at that time. In 2011, November 2011, I started this venture.
00:06:59
Speaker
on pen and paper. In April 2012, we registered it formally. Which venture was that? What was your first venture? Yeah, it wasn't the first venture, it was second actually. Second half, first of the web service. Second one that I registered myself, otherwise I would have had worked with multiple other startups before that. We called it Talent Unlimited Online Services.
00:07:28
Speaker
The reason being we wanted to promote the creativity and the talent of individuals. So our aspiration was to create a platform wherein creative people could come together, showcase their creativity, network with like-minded people, monetize their creativity, and so on. Was it somewhat like LinkedIn?
00:07:56
Speaker
It sounds like it has some commonality. Yeah, we wanted to create Instagram actually. Instagram was not there at that point of time. But we wanted to create something like Instagram of today. But we ended up creating an Etsy, which is a marketplace for art that didn't match with our aspirations and eventually we made a pivot. Okay. What did you pivot into?
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, so we continued with testallan.com since 2012 till 2015. Sorry, end of 2014. That's when we realized that the mobile space is growing exponentially while the web is becoming stagnant, while my photo was all web-related technologies.
00:08:56
Speaker
We decided to make a pivot to something that could add value into the daily life of smartphone users. We went to the drawing board and we realized that there are two reasons primarily for which people buy smartphones. One
Monetization and Strategic Focus
00:09:13
Speaker
was conversations, be it textual conversations or voice based conversation or video conversations. And the second one was to click pictures, camera.
00:09:25
Speaker
So we wanted to innovate on these two fronts and we wanted to build something that can be used by each and every individual that can go into each and every smartphone. So in 2015, early 2015, we came up with this concept of bobble head. You just take a selfie and we create a nice cartoonified version of yourself with your own face, your expressions.
00:09:54
Speaker
your accessories, your custom message. And then you can create thousands of stickers, gifs, and emojis out of that bobblehead. And you can share it. You can use it during your WhatsApp, or Facebook, or Instagram conversations. So the vision was to enhance the smartphone conversation experience, making it much more expressive. With a personalized audio.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yes, that's right. This is how we started bobble. Your entire team stayed with you or like this was a new venture and you shut down the previous venture. No, the entire team, the entire set of investors, everybody remained. We did not shut down the previous venture. So we don't accept failures. That's how I can put it.
00:10:52
Speaker
We will pivot, we will pivot, we will dodge, we will work around like we won't accept failure. So you had like VCs backing the talent idea with you and how did you get funding? You must have been like just like 20 something. So how did you actually like, you know, walk into a room with much older VCs and convince them to back you?
00:11:22
Speaker
It was difficult, I must say, in 2012, when we were creating testallen.com, it was a social network sort of an idea which was not seen in India. While VCs were mostly focusing on more fundamental problems in India.
00:11:47
Speaker
like more infrastructural problems, be it e-commerce, be it logistics, and so on. While we were building something which was not considered as a fundamental problem, although we believe that it's a fundamental problem for people to connect and converse and network. But for VCs, it was not. And most importantly, this idea did not have any business model associated to it. It was just a product.
00:12:17
Speaker
a social network, a product, which was promising because there were so many users using it every day. So therefore there was a promise, but there was no certainty around it. How do we monetize this platform? So it was difficult, but fortunately we got support from some of the veteran entrepreneurs in this space.
00:12:42
Speaker
Be it Sachin and Denny Bansal, both the founders of Flipkart, Deep Kalra, the founder of Make My Trip, Amit Ranjan, the founder of FlightShare, who sold to LinkedIn, the founders of 1MG Healthkart, Gaurav Gaval and Prashant Tandon, or the founder of LimeRoad Prashant Malik, who also created Facebook messages in the Pachakasandra database.
00:13:12
Speaker
And there were so many other, there were 18 angel investors who came together to invest into our company. This was through the IIT network or like, you know, how did you... Some of it was through the IIT network. Some of it was through mutual connects or through references. Some of it was also through NetVenture, which was the Syndicate platform.
00:13:39
Speaker
So there were 18 Indian investors in total. They came together because they had seen how a startup ecosystem in US was evolving at that point of time. And they had a firm belief that something similar would happen in India. And these individuals being visionary and have created some tangible businesses in the past,
00:14:07
Speaker
After their interest, VC's interest started coming in. And how much did you raise in your angel round? Obviously, the numbers would have been very small compared to today. That's right. In that time, numbers were really small. Our first round in 2013,
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, in 2013, it was just 20 lakhs. While in 2014, we did another NGO round, along with a VC, which is our partners. And it was a four crore round. Okay. And what was the
00:14:56
Speaker
a monetization that you probably, was it like ads, like based on the regular social media model or what was it? No, there was no monetization model, let's search. We used to say, okay, okay.
00:15:24
Speaker
But I think most species would want an answer to the monetization first. I mean, it depends from category to category. Depends on which category you're operating. Even today, CHS doesn't make it, you know, there may be much. And if you look at CHS that two years ago, probably you will not find any monetization model in it.
00:15:51
Speaker
So it depends on category to category. Even today there are so many startups are raising funds in the vernacular content space. They don't have any business model itself. But yes, if you are doing an e-commerce or logistics business, you definitely need a concrete business model in the first place. I also want to understand why you got
00:16:21
Speaker
disillusioned with the original idea. But look, you felt like a mobile bird. You could have also built a mobile version of Test Talent only. We did that. We did a good job there. We gathered a million users in our first six months of mobile app launch. And it was growing. But then we were force-fitting the Test Talent web features onto mobile. That was the first mistake we did.
00:16:52
Speaker
Secondly, our team did not have the DNA of mobile first. So we should have probably brought team members who have had created mobile technologies in the past. It was a learning experience for us. And the fact that the platform was positioned in the wrong manner
00:17:18
Speaker
It was our mistake. We took second. In what way was it wrong? People started considering it as a platform for a marketplace for art product. If you want to buy painting or an animation or something, you can go to test talent. Or if you want to hire an artist, you can go to test talent. So that was the positioning we got from the market.
00:17:49
Speaker
but we wanted to build something like Instagram. India had not seen anything like Instagram before. So it was difficult for them to imagine. We were too early, I would say, in that space. Today, I can see that there are a number of platforms who are doing good in the same space. They started late. They did very good. So it was a conscious call we took. We realized that we
00:18:19
Speaker
have to go really hands-on. I'm sorry. I'm spending a lot of time on this. But I think it's the other learning to understand what made you want to stop an idea and start a new one. You must have seen some symptoms.
00:18:52
Speaker
I think one of the symptoms was growth, I would say. The growth was fluctuating. It was not consistent. It was sinusoidal growth, just like a sine curve. So that was one of the reasons for a platform like
00:19:17
Speaker
that people expected to grow exponentially with network effect. The other mistakes, there was many mistakes with it. Actually, the other mistakes we did was instead of focusing on a particular geography, we made it open for the world. And we were taking pride of the fact that there were people from more than 10 countries who used to visit past talent every day.
00:19:44
Speaker
I think these are some of the mistakes. Instead of focusing on a smaller geography and creating a network effect there, we scattered the user base all over. We prematurely started introducing monetization. When I say monetization, I mean people who are there on the platform should be able to monetize their creativity, not us. So we started prematurely integrating, building those monetization features for our users.
00:20:15
Speaker
like a shop that like people could lift product. Yeah, yeah, right. Something similar and that also backfired the entire positioning got hurt. Right. And the very fact that, you know, we, the platform was imagined to be a web platform. All the features and all the functionalities were designed
00:20:43
Speaker
keeping in mind that people are going to access it from their laptop or from their desktops. When we started working on the mobile app, we started force-fitting those existing features into the app. If we had to relaunch test talent on mobile, we would have done it very, very differently.
Reflections on Strategic Errors
00:21:03
Speaker
So that was the reason which forced us to go to the drawing board again. And we decided to make a hard pivot.
00:21:13
Speaker
It was a risky decision for us because we just had six months of the runway left. We were not monetizing. There was no revenue. There was no commitment from investors. OK. Did you have co-founders? Yes, yes. So I had Mohammed Basim, who was our co-founder. And today, he's running a different venture. It's called Easy Eat in Malaysia. OK. He was like a batchmate or something?
00:21:42
Speaker
No, no. He was 10 years senior to me. Not from IIT Delhi, but we met through a common connect in IIT. OK. Got it. So yeah, please continue. Sorry. So you had like six months of runway. No guarantee that investors will back the new idea that you were planning. Yes.
00:22:07
Speaker
But we were very confident on it because we did our initial set of user research. And we figured out that people need something like that. People love expression during their conversation. We just had to make it seamless and personalized. We came up with some ideas that really work in our favor. But before that, in February, when we released the first version of Bobble, it served.
00:22:36
Speaker
People did not appreciate the product at all because it was all buggy. I mean, it didn't work on so many Android devices. It used to crash. But one good thing we learned from that experiment was that people loved the concept of having personalized stickers. They appreciated the concept. They didn't like the product.
00:23:03
Speaker
It was a clear cut direction for us. We improvised on the product. We created something that worked on all the phones and we relaunched it in March, end of March, 2015 with a hack. The hack was we used to show a widget on top of WhatsApp. Whenever you open WhatsApp, you see a circular widget on top of it.
00:23:28
Speaker
from where people could share their personalized content on WhatsApp. It made it a seamless experience. Instead of closing your WhatsApp conversation and going to some other application to bring content, now you can get the content right on WhatsApp. It was a good hack that really worked in our favor. Anyway, we started adding a million users every two months or so.
00:23:57
Speaker
Wow. This was in 2015, you know, after May, June, et cetera. And then in July, sorry, in August, staff partners committed to invest in series. OK. And how much was that round? It was a $3 million round. OK. So your first version of the Bobble app, what was it like? It was essentially just like a
00:24:26
Speaker
selfie camera with if you pick a photo and then you have some option to edit and like create the final emoji. Right, and then the same bobblehead can be used to create multiple sets of stickers, jokes and stories. These are available on your WhatsApp through that widget and you can share it with your friends and family members. You can customize it on the go.
00:24:55
Speaker
So that was the initial idea, user generated content, or rather, let's say conversational content. And since WhatsApp didn't have any expressive features, right? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it didn't. OK. Today, it does have all of these features integrated into WhatsApp UI, but in 2015, it did not. OK.
00:25:23
Speaker
The user acquisition happened. Did you advertise or was it purely like it became viral? It became viral because we did not have the money to advertise at that point of time. I said we had six months of envelope out of which three months was already invested into product creation. It's clearly we did not have any money to advertise, but rather there was another hack. So one hack was getting into WhatsApp UI.
00:25:52
Speaker
to that widget. And the other hack was every time the content gets shared, there was a bubble watermark in the corner. It made the receivers understand where the source of the content is. And they used to find us by searching for us on restore or Google search. OK. OK.
00:26:18
Speaker
And the downloads were from which country? Was it largely India or was it global? Yeah, it was India. It was India because all our content were in Indian nature. You know, kya hal hai and this type of content.
00:26:39
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. So then what? You have a product in which people can make emojis.
00:27:06
Speaker
You know, how did things evolve after that? And Saif also put in series A, so. Yeah, again, the series A was also, you know, it was difficult because, again, we did not have a revenue stream as such. We just had a product which was gaining traction. There was no revenue and there was no plan of revenue.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yet we were able to convince the partners that we are definitely creating some value into the user's life. And that is why people are organically finding us and using our product. I'm sure we'll be able to capture the value at some point in time. With that faith, Saff had invested. But then there was a certain surprise came from
00:28:03
Speaker
Android side. It was early 2016 when Android scrapped the API that we were using to show our widget on WhatsApp. As I had mentioned, it was a hack. The API got scraped, not because of us, but because of some Facebook also use this Facebook messenger. Similar widget. But Facebook messenger.
00:28:33
Speaker
The generic widget, which I have already mentioned, is specific to WhatsApp. WhatsApp opens a lot of things. Okay, okay, okay. Otherwise, people will get frustrated with the experience. So, if you want to open WhatsApp, you can open it. Because Android had scrapped that API. The widget got disappeared.
00:29:03
Speaker
from what's up, people started blaming us. They didn't know that it was Android. People started giving us bad reviews and installing our application. And all of a sudden, we lost the whole majority of our user base. We had gathered, if I remember correctly, 78 million users by early 2016. It all went down to less than a million. OK.
00:29:32
Speaker
As in uninstalled software, yeah, active users are better, yeah? Uninstalled software, sorry. Wow, okay. So, yeah, Malik, we were surprised. Fortunately, we had a runway because we had recently reached the front. So we started looking out for new opportunities, you know. How do we come out of a situation which is externally induced where we don't have any control?
00:30:02
Speaker
and we, which is the core experience that we had built, people were loving us for that core experience of seamless content sharing on WhatsApp. If that core experience was no more there, then they don't bother about Bobble Drive. Fortunately, we landed up into new set of APIs that was opened by Android in the same OS version.
00:30:30
Speaker
So while they scrapped some of the APIs, they opened new set of APIs, which was keyboard API. And
Keyboard Integration and Technological Hurdles
00:30:40
Speaker
fortunately, right at the same time, iOS also opened those keyboard APIs for third party developers. Earlier it wasn't there. The keyboard was Android open source project keyboard that typically phone manufacturers used to preload in their phones.
00:30:57
Speaker
Now, keyboard was being democratized. There were APIs available for third-party developers. We quickly grabbed that opportunity and built a keyboard that could share sticker chips and emojis. This was the first time any keyboard in the world had come up with stickers integrated natively into it.
00:31:25
Speaker
It made all the difference. People, again, appreciated the concept. They loved the concept, but they hated the product itself. Why is that? Because keyboard is a difficult product to build. Not anyone and everyone can build it. It's a product that requires extensive research around language technologies, around typing experience, hygiene, stability.
00:31:54
Speaker
It's an application, it's a service that is used across application, right? Whether it's on WhatsApp or Uber or Amazon, you're using your keyboard. The compatibility needs to be ensured and all of those things. So, it's a complex product to build. Okay. And keyboard key, predictive OOT and suggestions and auto-correct. It requires another set of R&D around it.
00:32:22
Speaker
Vosara, you have to build from scratch? Are there like... The LA version with the Kuchbin 8 was just a plain vanilla keyboard with content sharing functionalities. People loved the concept, they hated the product, that gave us a direction. We started working on the core of the keyboard. We thought if we have to survive, we have to crack the keyboard.
00:32:47
Speaker
And your co-founder was with you also, like by this time or had he left? Yes, he was there. And how much runway did you have at this time? Like when you started keyboard project? We had decent runway. We were prudent in investing, in spending money and therefore we had decent runway.
00:33:09
Speaker
No financial risk as such, but the risk was from the technology side, whether we can crack keyboard as a product. It was difficult. So we started focusing on keyboard experience. We started building all of those technology in-house, be it word suggestion, autocorrect, swipe typing, speech to text, languages, and whatnot. Everything was built in-house.
00:33:39
Speaker
And our motivation level did not go down simply because there was a lot happening in the keyboard space. When we were tracking it, we realized that Google itself entered into the keyboard space in 2016 August with Google Gboard as a core product. Microsoft acquired SwiftKey again in the same time, similar months, for $250 million.
00:34:10
Speaker
Baidu launched Facemoji keyboard outside China for global audiences in the similar months, late 2016. So there was a lot happening in the keyboard space and that kept our motivation high. That made us think that probably we have landed into a large opportunities which only the larger tech giants can see right now. Probably there is a reason why Android and iOS opened keyboard APIs in 2016.
00:34:41
Speaker
This Baidu's Facemoji would have been like a direct competitor to Bobble keyboard. Yeah, if he was Google Gboard, Microsoft Swift key, Baidu, Facemoji, Touch file. But in terms of positioning, Swift key had a different positioning. That was probably more about speed of typing. That's right. Baidu's keyboard was earlier called Cmeji keyboard. And you can probably check on the internet.
00:35:08
Speaker
Their product was called CMEJI Keyboard in China and Japan. But in India, when they came, they partnered with us to get a face technology, bubble head technology. And that's why they renamed their keyboard to FaceMoji Keyboard. That's how the name came into being. But then eventually, they did not respect the agreement. They moved out and created and launched their own keyboard, but they retained the name.
00:35:37
Speaker
That's how Baidu Space Project came into big in India. Having said that, we were not worried. We had our own journey. We were very confident in our tech strength. We continued investing time and resources on R&D. And in 2017, late 2017, we had surpassed all other keyboard in terms of engagement.
00:36:03
Speaker
be it sessions, time spent, or DAO by MAO ratio, or retention. What is this DAO by MAO ratio? DAU by MAU. So daily active user divided by monthly active user. It's one of the KPIs for consumer product. What's the rule of thumb for that? There must be some rule of thumb. What does it show? It depends on category.
00:36:33
Speaker
In general, for other categories, I would say 20% DAO by MAO is considered very good. Which way? 20% of your user base uses it every day. Yes, sort of. They say like WhatsApp DAO by MAO would be like 95% or something. Probably. I'm not sure, but probably.
00:37:00
Speaker
In our case, it was around, I think, 65%, 70% at that time. Today, now it has increased to 85%. In any case, so all of these metrics, whatever numbers we had, was the best in the industry. Even the app rating was the highest. And even today, we hold our command and all of these engagement retention and rating and NPS score metrics.
00:37:31
Speaker
as the best in the industry. Now, while we had cracked product and now people were loving our keyboard experience and the fact that there is a content integrated into that keyboard. Earlier, no other keyboard had any content in it. Today, you'll see most of them has. In 2017, towards the end, this was the time when
00:37:57
Speaker
We had cracked the product, but the scale was not there. We had hardly maybe half a million keyboard users, not more than that. So the scale was not getting cracked, though we have cracked the product experience. The reason being, you know, one
00:38:22
Speaker
there was less awareness amongst the users that they can literally switch their keyboard in their smartphone. So they
Strategic Partnerships and Scaling Efforts
00:38:29
Speaker
used to believe that whatever keyboard has come as default is the one that they are supposed to use. Which is like a deliberate move by Google. For Google, for Android, it's easier. For iOS, it's even tougher.
00:38:53
Speaker
Android kept on making it easier because Google Gboard was another third party keyboard product they had to publicize. But iOS kept it complex, probably deliberately, I don't know. Now we needed to crack scale. This is when we entered into a new phase in our journey.
00:39:20
Speaker
We started partnerships with smaller phone manufacturers. It beat lava, or Panasonic, Orgione, and IndusOS, Micromax, et cetera, at that time. And we started preloading our keyboard as the default keyboard. This gave us the captive audience who got more time to explore our features and feel connected and become a written user.
00:39:49
Speaker
And then we were able to build a business case that our keyboard works amazingly well when it is preloaded into an OEM, into a device. But we were somehow not able to crack any of the large OEMs. The reason being, since there were so many other tech giants in the industry who had built their own keyboard,
00:40:18
Speaker
They were paying these OEMs a large sum of money for preloading. Right. And Samsung had their own keyboard, no? No, Samsung had licensed it from SwiftKey. So while it is a white-label license, therefore, you would see Samsung keyboard, but it is actually a SwiftKey. Got it. OK. No other phone manufacturer except Apple has their own keyboard.
00:40:47
Speaker
No other. Out of 180 Android manufacturers out there, zero Android manufacturer has built a roll keyboard. It's because it is difficult to build and they need to focus on more important aspects of the device, be it LED screen or camera quality or voice quality, but they don't need to do everything on their own. And the fact that they were easily getting keyboard software from other players in the market and they were getting paid for it.
00:41:16
Speaker
Google was paying them. Microsoft was paying them. They're why we went the wheel. Exactly. But it was difficult for us because we did not have the money to pay. So our scale was questionable whether we can beat others in this scale. Although we have created a good product, but that doesn't mean that we will win the game.
00:41:44
Speaker
So this is when we started thinking in 2018, the entire 2018 was invested into understanding the OEM space. There's different relationships between Google and OEMs and Microsoft and OEMs and figuring out what values they need that we could have built and offered, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually in 2019, we cracked the deal with Xiaomi.
00:42:13
Speaker
and this was the biggest win because Xiaomi had already become the number one player in India. And cracked a deal in the same terms like you were paying them for it or like what? We cracked a deal which is more strategic and deeper in nature wherein they also invested into our company and we created a co-branded keyboard called Mint keyboard for Xiaomi devices which has much deeper integration with MIUI operating system
00:42:43
Speaker
And there is a revenue share arrangement, whatever revenue we generate, we share with them, et cetera. But there was no upfront payment that needed to be done from our side. OK. So revenue, I can't figure out how to have the revenue here. Like, no, it's a deal with the revenue share arrangement, but revenue need help.
00:43:06
Speaker
Some trusted us. They trusted our team, our capabilities. They knew, because Xiaomi in its heart is a product focus company. They care for their product experience a lot. And they knew that this product was good, was better than everybody else. They also knew that we are a startup with challenges. We cannot invest money into distribution. So they came out as a savior for us, I would say.
00:43:33
Speaker
How much did they invest? They invested another three million dollars. So far, Bobble is running on funding only. No revenue figured out. No, no. Now we are generating revenue in the later part of this. So far meaning like 2019. That's right. We were not having any revenue in 2019.
00:43:57
Speaker
Whatever revenue you would see on ROC portal probably would be from the mutual fund investments etcetera. We park our funding around. I mean there's no operational revenue. After cracking Xiaomi, things became even clearer to us. What we want, how we want to execute it and what does OEM want etc.
00:44:25
Speaker
Tell me about that. What became clear to you? It's a secret sauce, actually. Why OEMs prefer to work with us, not Google? Because we offer them certain values which Google cannot offer. It's just not in their hands.
00:44:53
Speaker
Because of the historical baggage and being a large corporate, they have certain limitations, which we don't. You can do deeper integration, like you said, with my UI. You can do customization and deeper integrations.
00:45:12
Speaker
We don't have one single brand. We are a multi-branded portfolio of keyboard products, while Google has one single brand keyboard. So Gboard, when it goes to Xiaomi, it is called Gboard. When it goes to Samsung, it is called Gboard. Even in OPPO, it's called Gboard. But in our case, it's different. We call it Mint Keyboard in Xiaomi and other keyboards in other products. Right? And you think that Mint Keyboard is a product of Xiaomi? Sort of.
00:45:43
Speaker
So branding, co-branding, customization of the product for every job, every user segment, for high-end phone, for low-end phone, et cetera. Revenue sharing is another value proposition, which is unmatchable. But revenue from where, like?
00:46:12
Speaker
We were still in our distribution phase. So from product R&D phase, we graduated to the distribution phase. In
New Revenue Channels and Financial Turnaround
00:46:21
Speaker
touch talent, we remain in the product R&D phase. We never could graduate into higher distribution. In Bobble, we graduated into distribution. And then we started getting very good traction with the help of Xiaomi and other telecom operators and OEM partners. We were getting really, really good traction. Every month, we were adding so many users.
00:46:42
Speaker
and all of them are captive users. Now was the time to monetize. So we have a very good product, highly engaging, retaining, viral, very good traction in terms of user base, which is fast increasing. And we started thinking about monetization.
00:47:00
Speaker
in 2020, especially after COVID, when we realized that Patani is a funding milling, a beginning milling. So we started building some revenue streams. This is the time when we got in touch with Apple India Limited, which is a listed company in the mobile marketing domain. They were doing fairly well in the tech sector. So we partnered with them, and they did a strategic investment into our company.
00:47:30
Speaker
with a promise to facilitate monetization. We came up with three different revenue streams. Actually, the fourth one is an experimental one. So therefore, we don't protect. But there are actually four revenue streams based upon four different assets that the company is generating.
00:47:54
Speaker
The first asset that we generate is the content sharing, which is right from the beginning. People love sharing our sticker chips and emojis. So that content sharing is an asset for us. And we monetize it by including brands into those relevant pieces of content. Just imagine I talk to you. I send you a sticker saying, let's go out for a coffee. And then there is a Starbucks branding in that sticker.
00:48:21
Speaker
or let's go party and there is a kingfisher branding in that sticker. Something of that sort. I'm just keeping it in short. So there's a lot of story behind this model itself. But this model is what we call as conversation media marketing. Very similar to social media marketing. But social media marketing, you have public platforms where people display themselves in a publicly manner.
00:48:51
Speaker
But in case of conversation media marketing, it happens during one to one, one to few intimate conversations on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram Direct, et cetera. We created this new category called conversation media marketing. It's going really well for us. You can check out various clients they have worked with in the past, in our website. Who are some of the major clients? I mean, you name it and we have them. So we work with
00:49:19
Speaker
Mondelez, which has Oreo cookies and Cadbury, dairy milk, silk. And we work with ITC, which has sunfish, yippee noodles. We work with the United Breweries, Kingfisher. We work with Adidas, Reebok, like sports brands. We work with apps like Tinder and Jamato, et cetera. OK. And lively India with? India, yeah. This model is right now in India.
00:49:49
Speaker
But your users are also largely in India, or? Right now, it's largely in India. But now, we have Headstar, Rescan have expanded into Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the geographies. But mostly, it's India, because of our historical presence in India. Yeah, so conversation medium acting is a huge success for us. It's a new category we are creating, which monetizes the
00:50:18
Speaker
content sharing asset which is generated from a keyboard experience. The second experience that we, the second asset that we generate as a company is the engagement. So you use keyboard during app store searches or Amazon searches or searching for Pizzan, Jamato, or putting in your location in Uber, et cetera. So while you are, you know,
00:50:47
Speaker
doing those use cases in your smartphone, keyboard is in foreground. And therefore, keyboard has the ability to recommend you the products and services and offers around those use cases, right at the time when you need it. So if you're using Bobble keyboard, if you open Amazon and search for something, you might get a recommendation from keyboard saying, you know, you can get the same thing from your card at 10% off.
00:51:16
Speaker
But what do you think about the keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard keyboard
00:51:39
Speaker
small, unobtrusive thing, or is it big? Yes, it's absolutely non-intrusive. You can choose to switch it off if you don't like the feature. Got it. Yeah, a keyboard may be similar, they recommend emojis. They recommend emojis, but we do recommend emojis, but we do recommend products and services and offices. Based on the context, your recommendation would be
00:52:06
Speaker
Exactly. And that's why we call this business model as contextual recommendation business. OK. Got it. Take care. Right. So the first one was conversation media marketing business, monetizing the content sharing. The second one is contextual recommendation business, monetizing the engagement. The third one is the data, the intelligence that we capture across smartphone usage and the understanding that we develop around that consumer
00:52:36
Speaker
across smartphone usage is then used to facilitate something called programmatic advertising. And you can read more about it in our website, how we process the audience data in our DMP in a GDPR compliant manner. We create audience segments which is then bid upon by advertisers and advertisers get to target them on some other platform.
00:53:03
Speaker
So just imagine, you know, you search for Pizan Zamato, and then you went to Hotstar, started watching an IPL match. And during the IPL match, you started seeing an ad from Domino's. That happened because Bobo AI was able to facilitate that relevance of advertising through a programmatic advertising channel. And this is where the Apple deal
00:53:31
Speaker
All of these are facilitated by Apple? Not all of these, but yes, the contextual recommendation is entirely facilitated by Apple right now. They have exclusivity on that business model. While the data intelligence business, programmatic advertising business is facilitated by Apple, but not entirely.
00:53:57
Speaker
They have licensed some active infrastructure to us to be able to run this business. Conversation media marketing is entirely in-house. Apple also helps you get clients? Do they introduce you to their client base also?
00:54:20
Speaker
There are investors. So we have a vested interest. It's a natural expectation to access each other's network. The fourth asset that our company generates is the technology itself. So the keyboard platform, as I mentioned earlier, it's a highly complex platform, very tough to build. Whatever we have built is proprietary, is patent-pending.
00:54:48
Speaker
can be unbundered from the keyboard and can be provided to non-computing businesses in the form for license. So we are working with some clients wherein we are licensing our content technologies, our language technologies, transliteration, translation, and so on. What all have you built technology-wise? I think you obviously, in your language technology, it could be auto-correct.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah, there's the bare minimum you can expect, but there's a lot more to it. In fact, I would want the audience to also check our website in the Tech Licensing section. You will see various technologies listed there. Just to quote a few important ones, the first and the most important one is the selfie-to-bobble light technology. If you want to make your game expressive and you want the player to become
00:55:48
Speaker
the character of the game, you can do that using our Bobblehead API. Or for that matter, our localized GIF repository can be accessed through GIF APIs. If you want your platform to have localized experience, you can source GIFs from us. Or if you want your platform to support transliteration or
00:56:15
Speaker
Indic languages or the speech to text in Indic languages, etc. Then you can borrow the language technologies from us. Yeah, API's and SDK's both are available. Then there is a whole new experience around conversational banking that we have created. So basically making payments and financial services accessible
00:56:44
Speaker
across smartphone usage. So if I'm on WhatsApp, I might want to make a payment. Today, WhatsApp supports payment. But if you want to avail loan, then WhatsApp doesn't support loan. You can do all of those things from your keyboard. There are platforms where
00:57:07
Speaker
you might generate an intent to make a payment or to execute a financial service. Such platforms are not supported. For example, if I'm chatting with somebody on, let's say, on Instagram direct, then I could access my financial services from my keyboard and so on.
00:57:32
Speaker
There's a whole new section of conversational banking, which is developed by us in partnership with HCL Innovation Lab. HCL Technologies Alliance partner to distribute this technology amongst their client and banks across the world. This is like a, it carries the branding of the bank. So for example, it would be install ICICI keyboard. Something like that. Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. And, uh,
00:58:00
Speaker
Like how has the revenue journey been so far like you know 2020 you started so Yeah, 2020 August when we raised our funds, we were making $10,000 a month You know, we closed our financial year March 2021 with hundred thousand dollars a month So almost 10x rise in revenue in just nine months It's growing further. I mean, it's growing election-bounce now that we have entered into multi-station phase with entirely
00:58:30
Speaker
focused approach and monetization. We have built our business team, hired, achieved business officer and so on. So now we have a, our revenues are growing very fast. And how much did you raise from Apple? It was $6 million in two rounds. Okay. So what is now the valuation of Bobble? Is that like public that number? That's not public.
00:58:56
Speaker
But I can probably say that it's closer to $100 million. Amazing. OK. And why did you have co-founded Leaf? So it happened in 2019, just before the Xiaomi investment happened. Even after creating a very good product, we were not able to distribute it, given the competition from Google and Microsoft.
00:59:26
Speaker
It was a tough time for us. We were not generating revenue, so the accounts were, you know, how do I put it? Account?
00:59:44
Speaker
Many team members left us during that time because it was difficult to survive, I would say. We had seen really tough times when we did not have the money to pay salaries, et cetera. So this was the time when Vasim also decided to move on and create another startup in Malaysia. He wanted to move to Malaysia, get married there, settle there.
01:00:09
Speaker
So it was a decision that was taken in consensus. We helped him move out and when Xiaomi investment happened, we also gave him a decent cash exit with some upside in the form of shares in the company.
01:00:30
Speaker
So Xiaomi was like a lifeline for you. You were like literally out of cash. That's right. So we were literally out of cash. If Xiaomi did not happen, we would have probably sold our company to somebody. We had three acquisition offers at hand during the same time. From what kind of companies? I don't want to name them, but those are all large tech giants. And when Xiaomi came on board, they offered
01:01:00
Speaker
The guy just asked me one simple question, do you want to run the company? And I said, yes. Given a chance, given an opportunity, I would still want to run the company. I don't want to sell. Selling is the compulsion for me, not a choice. And then Chami came forward and gave us the opportunity.
01:01:26
Speaker
Here's a $3 million. Here's a commitment of 30 million devices that I'm going to preload your keyboard on. Let's see if we can make a business out of it. And we said, OK. And we'll take that as a challenge. And we'll take this as a lifeline for us. And we'll turn around the company. And we did turn around the company and created $100 million company now. Amazing. So when do you think it will be the right time for you to sell?
01:01:52
Speaker
I mean hypothetically, suppose there was a sale offer on the table, like when would it be the right time? There is always a sale offer. I think tomorrow if I want to sell, I can sell it at a pretty premium amount and I can make probably 20, 30, 40 million from myself individually. But that's not something we aspire to do.
01:02:19
Speaker
If we had to sell any time in future, it would be a compass and it would not be a choice. Like never you're saying basically, then your answer to my question. Never. I'm not saying that the bubble will never get sold. It might happen that we can sell it, but that would be a compass. I mean, we won't do it out of choice. Got it. Okay. So what do you think is the
01:02:47
Speaker
ahead in Bobble's journey. Vision 2023
Aiming for Unicorn Status and Future Goals
01:02:52
Speaker
is to create a unicorn and Vision 2025 is to launch an IPO. Through a keyboard platform only or are you also thinking of beyond keyboard? We are a holistic platform now. Keyboard is a portfolio product. We call ourselves the conversation media platform where the mission is to enhance smartphone conversations.
01:03:18
Speaker
We make conversations more expressive, localized, personal, and smart with innovations around typing languages, voice, content, camera. Keyboard is a delivery channel for us where we bundle all of these innovations and make it available to our users.
01:03:42
Speaker
Like, you know, there is a platform. You are on Google's platform at the end of the day. So I mean, tomorrow, Google could, like, for example, change the API or it could copy your features. And isn't that like a major risk? I don't think so. It's equivalent to saying Google will tomorrow change the Google Maps API and then Uber and Ola will die. It's equivalent to saying that.
01:04:12
Speaker
Bobble dying because of changing keyboard APIs is as much possible as over and over dying because of changing Google Maps API. OK. But the possibility of Google Coping is there, no? That's already happening. I mean, it's a law of the land. Anything, any good innovation that comes on reality, it gets copied, which is absolutely fine. It's normal. So what do you think will help you compete with Google?
01:04:40
Speaker
on Google's own platform. Like I mentioned, we have a secret sauce with our relationship with OEMs and telcos. And slowly and gradually, we are eating away market share from Google. Google is not just Google, but other keyboard players out there as well. And we think that we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to build on our journey. We'll come out as a strong player independently. So in a pie chart, how big would be Bobble's share in terms of keyboard?
01:05:11
Speaker
Right now, it could be an axis of 10%. Global or in India? In India. And what do you see it becoming? It will be probably an axis of 50-60% because of some of the OEMs that we are working with who have this much market share. What are some of the names that you are
01:05:36
Speaker
I mentioned Xiaomi which itself has 30% market share. We are slowly and gradually being ruled out in Xiaomi devices. So 30% market share is given to us. There are other OEMs that I cannot name right now. It's confidential. But these are top five OEMs which have started working with us. Are you also like in talks with the BBK group?
01:06:02
Speaker
We are in talks with all the OEMs in the world. There are certain big names which have been closed recently. Oh wow, okay. I am looking forward to that. Where are you going now? Soon, hopefully, once the product goes live, it's in the integration phase.
01:06:23
Speaker
So that was Ankit Prasad telling Akshay Tath all about his journey of growing and building Bobble. If you'd like to know more about Bobble, log on to bobble.ai. That's B-O-B-B-L-E.ai.
01:06:42
Speaker
If you like the Founder Thesis Podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit thebotium.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N dot I-N for a complete list of all our shows.
01:07:02
Speaker
This episode of Founder Thesis Podcast is brought to you by Long Haul Ventures. Long Haul Ventures is the long-haul partner for founders and startups that are building for the long haul. More about them is at www.longhaulventures.com