Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Building the D2C success stack | Sonakshi Nathani @ Bik
302 Plays2 years ago
Bik helps companies increase the sales of their online stores through AI-powered customer engagement and communication tools. Sonakshi shares the journey of first building up Bikayi as a WhatsApp commerce tool for small businesses before making the pivot to Bik which offers solutions to large global enterprise clients.
Additional links:-
1.Strengthening Conversational Commerce Bikayi Plans To Scale Bik.ai
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Sunakshi and BIC
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, I'm Sunakshi, co-founder and CEO of BIC.
00:00:16
Speaker
In a gold rush, the best business to be is in the business of selling shovels. One such company that is selling shovels in the current gold rush of e-commerce is BIC, which was previously known as BICAI. BIC helps companies to increase their sales of their online stores through AI-powered customer engagement and communication tools. In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt speaks to Sonaksh Nathani, the co-founder and CEO of BIC,
00:00:43
Speaker
So,
Sunakshi's Entrepreneurial Journey Begins
00:00:44
Speaker
Naxi shares the journey of first building up Bikai as a WhatsApp commerce tool for small businesses before making the pivot to BIC, which offers solutions to large global enterprise clients. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast and any audio streaming platform to learn about the founder's journey to finding product market fit.
00:01:10
Speaker
the dreams was always about starting my own company, starting my own business. That was the aspiration since even I remember when I was 10, 12 years old, that was the only thing that always used to pop my mind. And since I was super good in mathematics, I chose science as my academic path.
00:01:29
Speaker
Then I got into IIIT. It's again a place which is all about spending four years with people who are top-notch in algorithms, computer science, and then getting placed into top-notch companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook. So I worked at Microsoft after doing my graduation from IIIT in computer science, and that's where I met my co-founder as well, Ashu.
00:01:53
Speaker
We both were batch mates in the university. And I worked for Microsoft for three years as software developer. But as I said, always there was this itch of starting my own company. Throughout those journey of three years, it was always about thinking what I can do next, what I can build. Maybe I should go back and join my family business. Always the mindset of startups or reading about them made me choose this path. And by 2018 was when after working three years at Microsoft,
00:02:23
Speaker
I had a discussion with Ashu.
The Evolution of Vikayi
00:02:25
Speaker
Ashu was in Canada during those days. He was working for companies like Zenith Square, and we had a discussion that maybe we should start something of our own. He moved back, and that's how, you know, Vikayi was born.
00:02:38
Speaker
So did you have a clear idea when you started talking to us? No. One thing was clear, we want to do something of our own. There was no idea as such what we want to do. But surely during my days at Microsoft, I was trying out multiple things. For example, there was a lot of startups who were trying out things on helping kids with education. I thought of thinking of building something on those lines, but I never executed anything only while doing my job. And then we thought of building some
00:03:07
Speaker
something related to restaurants where we were quitting our jobs, respective jobs. And it was more about these days, you must be seeing QR codes on the restaurant tables while scanning. So that was our idea that time. And very soon, like just after quitting the job, we understood it's more salesy kind of business. Like it's not more about product building and we are not very good at sales right now. So we thought of, no, we don't want to do this. We didn't have anything quitting our jobs.
00:03:35
Speaker
How did you finalize on the idea of Bikai? As I said, I belong to a family who runs their own business. So, I remember Ashu moved back to India. I was in Hyderabad that time. So, he moved to Hyderabad with me. And we were together for 2-3 months building that restaurant thing.
Growth Strategies and Customer Engagement
00:03:52
Speaker
But then we thought that maybe this is not something that we want to do. So, we moved back to our respective hometowns for a month during New Year's. And that's when I was spending a lot of time with my family, their business, understanding the model.
00:04:04
Speaker
That's why they also run a small kind of grocery store and they had started accepting orders on WhatsApp chat. And that made us realize that there's so much potential. Like literally our customers used to send messages of the items, list of items they wanted to order.
00:04:19
Speaker
and my family was okay like me, so that's when they thought there should be a tool to help them out and we started looking up for tools. We found Shopify, we found Indian versions of Shopify but none were, I would say, suitable exactly to those kind of profiles. By profiles, what I mean is people who just know how to use mobile, they have no idea about the complexities of desktop today we have and also people who understand internet is about WhatsApp and YouTube, they don't know anything.
00:04:48
Speaker
So that's how he searched for solution, didn't find any, and that's when he suggested, why don't we build one? And within days, Bikai was born as an app and play store, and it was launched. So this is how.
00:05:00
Speaker
So Bikai was like an app to create a digital storefront for people who are not tech savvy. They could very easily download, create a shop, list items with the price, and then send that link to their neighborhood customers that ordered through this. And then what would happen was they sent out a link to customers.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, so then the customers can easily browse opening that link. They can easily browse what is there in the store, what they have to offer, discounts, etc. And place the order. Once they get the order, then first we improved the showcasing experience where customers are able to see it easily. Then post-order experience where the shop owner or the merchant
00:05:44
Speaker
who is able to now easily able to manage orders. For example, they're getting 100 orders in a day or literally 20 orders in a day, seeing them in a place, understanding, okay, this is delivered, this is out of stock, so maybe I should cancel it, etc, etc. So these were like two major use cases we wanted to solve.
00:06:01
Speaker
But this did not have real-time inventory, like the inventory would be manually updated. And this did not have payment gateway, they would pay cash on delivery, something like that. Initially, it didn't have, but within a couple of months, we had our software, because Makshe has still remembered, although we built it, keeping my family business in mind, very soon, the acceptance of this product from those who were selling clothes, apparels, etc, started popping up. And because of COVID, it picked up really well during that time.
00:06:30
Speaker
How did you launch this? So this was launched in 2019 mid and it was very close to COVID. So within six months, like a full blown up organic acceptance of this product started happening. And that's when we built the payment gateways as well, because now these stores like we're selling Apple, Pan India, they need one night payments, etc. So we ended up building a full fledged e-commerce website builder for SMBs.
00:06:57
Speaker
Okay. So you built an app like version one, put it on play store. Did it get downloads or did you spend money to get it downloaded? Yeah, it also has a very interesting story. And like the background that I come from again, for them, business success means profitability. There is no other difference like raising money, etc. that didn't even exist in our dictionary.
00:07:20
Speaker
profitability was the ultimate goal for me and Ashu when we were starting off. And so whatever you think, your thinking process then takes a different path when you have a different thought process altogether. So when we started off, what we did was we joined a lot of Facebook groups, like for example Mumbai Wholesale Group, Delhi Wholesale Group, and started posting our app, Kalink, that if you're a wholesaler, if you're a retailer, this is the app you can use to create your own store install. And I still remember
00:07:48
Speaker
Zero likes, zero comments, and of course, zero in style. So then, I was at my hometown back then, understanding everything. So my cousin was there. He told me, when you thought, why are you not writing that?
00:08:04
Speaker
So yeah, this is actually such a valid point and then I rephrased my post on groups and I started writing, do you want to increase your sales on WhatsApp? In comment, yes. And you know that eight individual posts used to give us 800 likes.
00:08:20
Speaker
400 comments, people commenting, yes, and then I used to reply back, okay, then I have sent you a message on your DM. So this is how we started growing in initial one, two months because we were bootstrapping and profitability was the goal. And also we clubbed it with, since we had friends working at that time, used to give a lot of credit, add credits to employees. So we used to get
00:08:43
Speaker
35,000 rupees created from every employee and we had five, six friends. So we start itching right as well. That's okay. Okay. How did the product evolve then? Product V1 was there for how long? Did you make V2 post lockdown? Tell me that evolution.
00:09:02
Speaker
So yeah, when we started off simple cataloging tool, it didn't even have order placement capabilities, the version one of the product. Within a month, we launched order placing capabilities because we understood like order management is a very big use case within a month.
00:09:19
Speaker
Then I remember by June, which was the second month, we understood because we started getting a lot of calls and I and Ashu were managing customer support that time. So we started getting a lot of calls that, hey, I want to replace bikai.com slash mystore link to mystore.com.
00:09:35
Speaker
So we said, okay, this is a two way bill. Like first we thought, we don't have capability. They just say no. But then we thought, can you pay for that? When we told them, yes, we can do, but it is chargeable. It's not free. So they said, take money. And I still remember it was, one guy said 250 rupees. I cannot pay you 400 rupees that we asked for.
00:09:56
Speaker
They said, okay, okay, 250 though, because for us quitting our jobs last year in September and now it was June 2019, it felt even 250 rupees felt really good, like making some money. So we said, we agreed, he transferred us 250 bucks and then we sat throughout the night and we understood, okay, how can we do it? Then we launched a version where you can create your own website, a white label website.
00:10:19
Speaker
And once we did that after that, the evolution of product became super speedy because now people started seeing the capabilities of the product that now we have gotten our own website. So we need payment gateways. We need ways, very capable ways to search product listing. We need really capable ways of showcasing the different themes.
00:10:40
Speaker
Then they also started slowly evolving towards asking loyalty programs. They started asking subscription as a model on their website and a lot of things, product reviews, et cetera. So eventually, you know, this, in fact, we didn't have any product managers until six months ago. So everything was built by what customers were saying. So evolution has been all in customer-led.
00:11:05
Speaker
Tell me about some of these features. So, subscription for whom? These are retailers, right? What kind of subscription? So, let's say like Big Basket Daily, BB Daily. So, if someone was selling milk. So, now they want subscription for their consumers who can have this daily subscription of getting milk on their doorstep. So, this is one kind of thing. There were people who were selling subscription boxes, like for example, like a Dollar Shave Club, sort of.
00:11:32
Speaker
So there was a huge amount of subscription as a service model. Okay. And product reviews is obviously on that website only, like on that shopper site. Yes.
Y Combinator Experience and Funding Success
00:11:46
Speaker
And also the thing Akshay that happened was since our vision, since beginning was to make businesses successful. We wanted to make our family business successful and that's where we launched this product.
00:11:57
Speaker
So, you know, always that vision used to wander our minds that giving them a website, giving SMBs a website, is that enough to fulfill that vision? We agree to the fact that we are giving them access to tools who can take them online and opportunity they can become successful, but our vision of making them successful, are we fulfilling that? And that made us think very deeply and somewhere last year, around November, we came up
00:12:21
Speaker
a feature I would say or maybe a new offering which was marketing solutions and we started offering them digital marketing as a service. So whoever owned a Bikai website we said that okay you can come to us we'll give you we can run Google and Facebook ads on your website and you can just
00:12:40
Speaker
Relax, you don't have to worry about how you can get new customers. So we started off, we did pilot with just 15 customers. But within two and a half months, it exploded like 1000 plus businesses using our digital marketing as a service. So that's how we evolved in our product journey.
00:12:57
Speaker
Tell me how the numbers evolved, like what kind of downloads were you getting month on month? It is very, I would say, actually dependent on how much we spend on digital marketing. But I think we were approximately doing 5,000 to 6,000 installs per day. Wow, this is in pre-COVID or post-COVID? This is post-COVID, I would say. These numbers are around November, December, last year, 2021.
00:13:24
Speaker
Wow, amazing. So, once COVID hit, how did the numbers change? Do you remember that pre-COVID post-COVID? Yeah, pre-COVID, I still remember per install, we used to get 30 rupees, even a dollar, like 75, 80 rupees per install. But during COVID, it was never beyond 10 rupees. It was always below 10 rupees install.
00:13:45
Speaker
And post-COVID, I would say it increased a bit, but it has not gone to a level of what was pre-COVID. So people have adopted the solution to their natural habitation to run businesses.
00:13:57
Speaker
Did you talk about your cost per install? Like how much ad spend you had to do per install? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And like, what, what made you feel that this will become a big business? I believe you also raised your first round after COVID hit. Tell me about that maturation phase. Once you start talking to investors, then it's a different level of maturity. So, you know, what signs did you see that yes, this is going to be a mature business and I need to raise funds for it.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, so, Akshay, as I told you, we didn't have any clue about what VC means. And then you make it a successful business, go hype you, etc. I didn't know anything about VC fundraising. During COVID, we were sitting idle, so I and Ashu had this...
00:14:47
Speaker
play tennis for three, four hours a day. That stopped because of COVID and we found ample amount in our lives and what we can do with that apart from product building. I started researching our internet, found about Y Combinator. This was March 2020. I found about Y Combinator. I still remember seeing a quote on Twitter from Michael Siegel.
00:15:06
Speaker
that IC has gone all remote and we are also accepting applications who want to attend this remote. So then I read about it, understood more, applied to IC, we got in, fortunately they had asked for one video, we made it. But we never knew that this is going to change everything for Bikai.
00:15:26
Speaker
Because when we got into that, firstly, I called Ayatha from her, his partner at YC. He said that, congrats, you've got into YC program. We'll offer you $150,000. I just went straight away to Ashwin and said, $150,000 back then. But when programs started, they taught us about
00:15:44
Speaker
wondering, saying how to scale up your startup, how to think big, how to get everything into place, how to work really hard to achieve such numbers that you are committing to. Those were ethics. I would say startup ethics or an entrepreneur ethics that YC daughters and those three months were super, super amazing. And when we came out that program, we realized how much potential this app has. Not just the organic reach that we were already getting, that never made us realize the amount of potential it has.
00:16:13
Speaker
But the education that we got in Y Combinator, which was about thinking of TAM, thinking about how you can even expand your use cases to even get greater revenue opportunities from those TAM, how to think of challenges as something that is temporary, there is still a rise to go and things to achieve. So all those things were taught at YC and after 3 months, when we raised money, I would say honestly, it was easy because once you get out of YC, there are
00:16:40
Speaker
always a lot of angel investors reaching you out and especially if the numbers are growing month over month and especially if I see there was this saying over there that if you focus on just on growing your business for three months instead of focusing on fundraising, funds will come to you, it will walk to you. But if you don't do that, then it becomes difficult. So we just focused on increasing our revenue month over month. It involved a lot of product building, for example, Akshay, you are selling a subscription at 200 rupees per month.
00:17:08
Speaker
Now you suddenly have to increase your revenue next month. The only two ways you can do is you can increase the number of customers coming in. Or what you can do is increase your check size. To increase your check size, what you can do is you can increase the number of features in your product so that existing users. So we knew we don't have money because YC money also takes some time to reach our account. We didn't have money.
00:17:30
Speaker
only way to do was what we had to build product quickly within a month. We did that, all our existing started upgrading to the higher package and we were actually seeing 100% month-to-month growth on our revenues for three consecutive months in YC and that's how we raised that first round. So this is what happened. And so this 200 per month which that pre-YC that subscription package, this was just for the domain custom domain.
00:17:57
Speaker
custom domain and today just for example, in free will give you access to uploading 100 products versus in paid 100,000 products, those small features. And how did you increase this ticket size? What plans did you introduce? What did they do?
00:18:12
Speaker
So we understood because again, customer support was being done by me and Ashu all together. So we understood their weaknesses, their fear. One was like they liked, their website should look pretty well. So we introduced themes. So that was one pain point that we understood. And the other pain point that we understood was around inventory management.
00:18:37
Speaker
Since SMBs are really small, they cannot put in poor ledgers what they have. They need some ease around. They need a simple switch that I want to remove this. Don't put WhatsApp in numbers. So making that so easy. So now people started and then we also launched abandoned cart feature, which is now very common. But back then, giving them data about people who didn't end up ordering from their website.
00:19:02
Speaker
These couple of features, what I used to do was, that merchant is still very close to me, but I still remember whenever we had to increase our check size, I used to call up, schedule one hour, Google meet, I used to ask them, what is your problem? They used to give me a list of the features. So, how much is my package when I get upgraded version wheeled on? So, this is how we evolved.
00:19:24
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. Okay. And like by the time you finished YC, what kind of revenue were you doing there? Like what was the number of users? Yeah, it was not much. We were very small. The number I still remember was I think we were close to around 20, $25,000 of MRR back then. But we were out of my bones around that is what I remember. Yeah, I think so. It was not huge, but I would say good enough for a seed stitch company. And maybe like 10, 15,000 paying users, something like that.
00:19:54
Speaker
That's huge. It was competitively lower than that. But our check size was also, I think we had around 3000 to 4000 being used by December. So what was the experience of raising funds? Like you raised your seed fund by the time you finished YC. What was the experience of pitching? What did you pitch to investors? What was the big picture vision that you showed? During YC or after later that? For that, you did a 2 million seed round.
00:20:21
Speaker
So one was definitely revenue growth that we had shown. Second was the TAM because we wanted to show that even though we charge really low amounts like 200 rupees, 300 rupees, but TAM is so huge that it's going to come done and can become a billion dollar company.
00:20:40
Speaker
And then third is about the passion towards what we are building. So these were like three major storylines that we used during our C2C round of fundraise. And passion becomes very natural. It does not require any kind of practice, honestly, because
00:20:56
Speaker
In the end, if you're not loving what you do, it will end up becoming... because starting off is really easy. But somewhere, if the passion is not there towards the product or towards the pain point or the problem statement that we are solving, then you'll end up losing your path or your weight for it because the product team will keep coming back to you asking, what will happen next?
00:21:18
Speaker
same steamed milk I'll keep coming asking lot of that becomes unanswered there's no passion so that becomes really important while raising seed round that there should be a real honest passion towards what you do and then growth
00:21:31
Speaker
The Chainsmokers is one of your investors, right? How did that happen? I think Chainsmokers are really good friends with one of my partner. And they had emailed me on Gmail, on my Gmail, not even on my ad, bakai.com email. I did, they took billion Gmail saying, and their email, unka email me now.
00:21:50
Speaker
I explained Gmail when I thought it was not saying official Chainsmokers. So they had emailed me saying that we want to invest. We are really good friends with Brad Flora from Whitey. And we want to invest because you are the best company in the batch. So first, I had shown this message to Ashu and told him, we have made a lot of
Post-Funding Developments and Partnerships
00:22:09
Speaker
money.
00:22:12
Speaker
Well, let's reply, I'm sitting free, I'm sitting idle, I'll just reply what I'm in replying. And then they quickly got back saying that, Yaya, you want to meet, have a GME tomorrow. We scheduled a call and in the call as well, Ashu said it was 8am in the morning because of the US timings and Ashu said,
00:22:30
Speaker
I told them, whoever is managing, they find that guy will come. I said, no, they have written, they'll also come. I'll go right in time. So I told them, I'll go. So when I went there, the first person was sitting was Alex, the chain smoker person. And they were down towards so grounded.
00:22:50
Speaker
I would have never imagined them speaking that way. And they were all using appreciation words. And in that same call, which was of 30 minutes, they said, we want to invest, and we want to hear a yes from you. There was nothing about, OK, what are your numbers? Tell me more about your passion. How are you going to build this in a billion dollar business? None of these questions. They said, we love the energy in the call, and we want to invest, and we want to hear a yes from you.
00:23:14
Speaker
So, this is how it happened and they have been one of the most supportive investors throughout the journey of Vikayana State, super supportive, very supportive. Amazing. So, how did the way you were running the business change after this initial 2 million seed drought happened?
00:23:33
Speaker
Yeah, it was I would say a very interesting time and also very challenging at the same time Akshay because now you have money and you have no clue of what needs to be done with that and you have no experience whatsoever in terms of how well you can utilize this money.
00:23:51
Speaker
But how well you can utilize is the question that needs to be answered. And I have no clue, but when with the flow, people suggested you should focus on acquisition. We focused on acquisition. We spent a lot of money on acquiring new customers.
00:24:04
Speaker
That worked well because these were COVID days and it was a great opportunity for us to utilize on that. So first was this, we'll put a lot of money on acquisition. Second was building a right team for product. We didn't think of building sales team because organic revenues were healthy.
00:24:22
Speaker
And the product team in Anastasia, we hired one product lead of sorts in the company, but that didn't work out eventually for us in long run. But yeah, we hired one product lead, hired few people as a tech intern, junior tech full-timers as well. And the first and foremost thing that we did was because there were a lot of organic, we built a customer support team. So we hired eight people in customer support. That was the first thing that we did even before hiring tech and other people.
00:24:52
Speaker
train them, make them fully capable of what our situation stands for, solve that and then we hired tech and product. So that's how. So you get a lot of inbound calls or do you do outbound calls to customers like this customer support team? What is the inbound? Inbound, fully inbound. How we are structured is we have a WhatsApp helpline number. Our customer support team, they
00:25:12
Speaker
Actually, what they do is once someone installs the app, we start pushing them notifications that if you're interested in, let's say, buying our VIP pack, ultimate pack, then, you know, click on this. And whenever they used to click, it used to come to our WhatsApp where our support agent would sit and say, okay, these are the offerings. If you want to buy, here is the link.
00:25:31
Speaker
So that was their job and also technical assistance. That is the most trickiest part to crack Kaksha in SMB space. Technical assistance, if they even pay you 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, they will expect the Mercedes class assistance. You have to spend a lot of time with them to make them understand how solution works, how in the best capability they can use it and the most
00:25:52
Speaker
The fortunate part for us was they were ready to listen. They were the ones who were reaching out and telling, or Samjha, or Samjha, because we didn't have time back then. It was COVID. So that was where the support team helped us a lot. Okay. Got it. Okay. And how did the product strategy evolve post that? Like you told me, you introduced subscription features and reviews and themes and custom domain and some basic inventory management. So how did the product evolve after that? Like after the fund drop?
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, so after fundraising, product kept evolving in terms of features that we were adding, not something out of the box. I would say it was more about enabling the existing TG even more like these features, but some examples like what kind of.
00:26:38
Speaker
I still remember there was a huge demand of people understanding more about, they wanted to understand more about their consumers. Evolving more towards analytics was one thing that we really focused on. For example, how much time a consumer is spending on viewing a particular product.
00:26:56
Speaker
that much when SMB was particular about getting analytics off. Improving like digging very deeper on analytics, who's viewing, when he is viewing, what products are getting more views, etc. So, analytics was one part that we improved highly on. Then second thing was aesthetics again coming back to SSSet themes. So, aesthetics again became very important. For example, the checkout experience of merchant.
00:27:21
Speaker
So, they wanted something which can be very quick. So, for example, you get an option, either pay online or pay COD. So, COD, if some consumer chooses COD, but if you only enable online, then,
00:27:40
Speaker
So it was a tricky thing to solve and no one has solved in the world because we had problems with India and we were like the Indian players to solve this. So we got in a third option which we called it as partial COD. So what it meant was you can order online, you can pay it later.
00:28:02
Speaker
So, this is something that we introduced. It picked up really well, Akshay. Lot of people started immediately using that because it was a bridge between COD, online payment, all the number of orders reduced. If it would have been COD, it had picked up really well. So, those kinds of features getting deep into their insights, understanding, thought process and building it.
00:28:23
Speaker
Okay. So you give a dashboard to the business owner about which products get the maximum views and which products are most added to cart and like that kind of analytics. Correct. And in parallel, we also started building our own platform.
00:28:39
Speaker
where delivery apps can list their apps. So, for example, the first app was Wear IQ. Since they were our batch mates in YC, we got into this deal. They listed, they built an app on Bikai platform, like a Shopify app. We call it Bikai platform. They built it. Then Shiplock could also join the vegan. Delivery had joined the vegan. So like these three, like we became a platform where these delivery apps can put their apps on Bikai and our merchants can use it.
00:29:06
Speaker
Amazing. For the payment gateway service, is that something you monetize? Do you earn from that or you just charge them that whatever is being charged to you? Payment, we were monetizing. Even now we monetize. So we take around 1% of the total commission that we charge from our merchant comes to Bekai and rest goes out to the payment gateway that we use. Okay, got it. And what is your list now? What are the pricing plans today?
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, now we have another set of offerings, which we call it as Big.ai, but we can talk about that later. But in Big.ai as a product, we have three versions, like one is free. Then we have a VIP package where we charge $600 monthly, or if you want to pay yearly, then it's $6,000. And there is a word called Ultimate, where we just sell annual package, which is $30,000.
00:29:56
Speaker
And what does ultimate give you? Like more analytics and more like loyalty programs, et cetera, come in this thing. Then you also get a dedicated business coach that comes in ultimate. These are the people who will help you set up your stores. We internally have a full-fledged store set up team who literally takes whenever you buy a package, they'll come, they'll set up your store, they'll create banners for you, et cetera, everything else.
00:30:22
Speaker
Okay. For both VIP and Ultimate, your team will do this or only for Ultimate? Only for Ultimate. Okay. Okay. And this loyalty program is what? Like customers get some points every time they do shopping and those points can be redeemed. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Very interesting. Okay. And what about the trajectory of revenue? Like how did that change? Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
Revenue has been healthy in terms of the growth that we have seen, like we have been varying from 10 to 30% month-over-month growth for Bikai, after the funders that we did and that kept continuing after raising the funds as well. Pre-funding, it was more like a 100% growth because revenues were small, but after funding, 10 to 30% vary.
00:31:12
Speaker
Amazing. And what do you do now? What's your monthly run rate currently? What is your target for this year or next year? What is the number you are chasing? Since now, we have a lot of offerings like BIC has been introduced and it is more for mid-market enterprise margin. We have really high expectations from revenue. We are targeting around, I would say, at least a 10 million ARR by your
Rebranding to BIC and Strategic Focus
00:31:38
Speaker
end. But let's see. Amazing.
00:31:41
Speaker
Okay. So tell me about big.ai. Yeah. The journey, as you were asking, the journey of product evolution kept happening for us. And by November last year, we launched our marketing solutions, which were very manual, I would say. Any version that we were onboarding, Unka Digital Ads runner, running their Google ads, Facebook ads, it was a tedious job. Running an agency. Yeah. So onboarding thousand plus merchants on that agency portal.
00:32:10
Speaker
You imagine the workforce that we ended up hiring to support them. That made us realize that we should advertise this. This is not going to help us when we want to scale up. No productizing it got this thought process again in our mind.
00:32:25
Speaker
Like how do we do it? Google, at Facebook, at what should we do? But then we took a step back. We understood the problem statement. Problem statement is helping them acquiring merchants, helping them growing their business. So it's about marketing their solutions. And what is marketing, Akshay? If you see honesty, it's about understanding who your target audience is and then showing them the right set of communication at the right time.
00:32:49
Speaker
So if we are able to productise these two problem statements, then it's done. It's not about running at somewhere. It's about solving these two problem statements. And that's how we came up with BIC. BIC ended up becoming a platform where you're solving both of these problems. How you're solving like...
00:33:06
Speaker
you being a Bikai store owner or you being a Shopify store owner or you're being any kind of store owner, e-commerce store owner, you can integrate to BIC your data about your consumers, like who purchased what and when will flow to BIC and BIC gives you very smart segmentation. So let's say for example,
00:33:25
Speaker
a big would know share if you are doing segmentation of let's say nika.com so if Akshay is visiting he usually buys by end of month but he hasn't purchased anything in last 30 days so this is one segment who are becoming potential inactive customers you know let's say like we help them segment a data that we gather from their store
00:33:46
Speaker
and then recommend them. These are communications that you can send to this particular segment of consumers. So let's say if you didn't purchase anything for last 30 days, we will show you that there's a discount on the product that you usually buy, 50% off. And then also give these brands a communication channel, which is today's WhatsApp.
00:34:04
Speaker
So if we give them casting capabilities, then you know, this is the recommended message that you can show. And here is just one click by clicking on which in what's up with marketing message.
00:34:19
Speaker
So this is the capability that we built big with. Initially, we thought we'll take it slow. We understand the user behavior, segments, et cetera. But within a month of share, we launched it on June 20th. But within a month, we realized that it has picked up well. Stickiness is great. So we would like to expand it.
00:34:37
Speaker
That's where the company's focus became that since we are now beyond Bikai, like we are more than just an e-commerce enabler, we should re-blend us to BIC. And BIC also innovates more about, it's a name that will also have acceptance from international markets. It's not a Hindi word. So that's how you evolve towards BIC.
00:34:58
Speaker
So big is demarketing. Basically, if you want to get your existing user base back to your store for the next purchase, or you want to get them to increase the ticket size. So that is where you use big. Probably an abandoned cart also, it would automate that. Like you have products in your cart, they're running out soon or stuff like that. Basically what Amazon does, you're giving that power of what Amazon does to small retailers.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, but BIC is more for like we are opening up mid-market and enterprise merchants as well with BIC because if you see like data segmentation, the code like the P0 thing is that you should have data and small retailers might not have enough data to see segmentation for their stores. So this opens up as a company for us caged towards mid-market and enterprise level brands as well.
00:35:49
Speaker
To really use this, you need to have say 10,000 transactions at least happening on your store. Otherwise, it is not enough information. How is BIC monetized? What is the pricing for that? Still very early in pricing journey, but we are targeting around $20,000 of ACV annualized. So that comes around to 14, 15 lakhs of annualized payment the brands will have to use.
00:36:16
Speaker
Is it based on users, based on number of customers, based on number of messages? Yes. Overall, if you see our ideal customer profile, Akshay, as you said rightly said, they should have more than 50,000 customer base already. They should be doing at least a lack of monthly visitors on their website. So, keeping all those in mind, this was the average ACV that we came out to be. But our pricing depends on three levels. One is fixed platform charges. They are there. They will always be there.
00:36:44
Speaker
Then you know the number of subscribers or the consumers, unique consumers that you have that second, not based on the number of messages that you send that something like if you're using WhatsApp as a channel, then that if will be calculated. And then it's harder since because more evolved, which we can talk later as well.
00:37:02
Speaker
Because now even a world, more than retargeting it as a world to a big CRM, big bot, even a big growth, I would say, module to it. So the third aspect is the number of the agents that you add, the number of users that you want to add to your space. Okay. Okay. So what are these add-ons? Big CRM, big bot, big growth.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yeah, while running our pilot Sakshay with this retargeting tool, we understood that message, whatever we used to broadcast, always had a reply message from consumers. So, a single person cannot handle it. And if you're not handling it, then you will not end up having conversion.
00:37:41
Speaker
that eventually led us to build a CRM module as well inside BIC. And what it does is it gives you capability that you can split your charts between the agents that you add, your WhatsApp charts. You can also tag them bases. Let's say, for example, somebody is messaging you for refund. Somebody is messaging you to know more about your product. You can label them up. So that's another thing. Then third thing is you also need automated bots to reply, not just
00:38:07
Speaker
So you can automate it because there is a full-size integration that happens with your e-commerce store. So we know the product details, etc, pricing details, the discount you are currently offering. So everything that gets imported here and your bot can apply to it. And we also understood that these brands would also need certain acquisition help as well apart from just retargeting. So we introduced a module in BIC and what it meant was Akshay,
00:38:32
Speaker
We are giving them capabilities to introduce on their website, whether it be Shopify website, Bikai website. Let's say, for example, you open up a website called akshed.com and see us pin the wheel widget on top of your website just for attracting your consumers and making them fill the phone number. So we are giving them post growth widget.
00:38:52
Speaker
That also would be actually based on the cohorting. So, let's say we know this set of functions with visiting my website, he would like to see or spin the wheel discounts related to men grooming products, versus if a female sitting there will want to see something else. So, those are like growth modules that we have given.
00:39:10
Speaker
Okay. Fascinating. Like, Bikai as a product is now probably going to be a very minor part of your revenue because Bik is obviously a much higher ticket size product and it's a global product, right? Like you're looking at going outside India? Yes. Like it's a global product from day zero. We have already opened up our gates for Australian using it.
00:39:33
Speaker
Okay. Okay. And this right in the back of Shopify. Right now, yes. It's on Shopify and Pichai stores. Okay. Okay. But I'm guessing Pichai stores would not really be a major source, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay.
00:39:50
Speaker
Does a Bikai store owner also get a CRM? Can he see who and my customer, this is their number so he can call them? They have everything. So we already had a CRM capability inbuilt on Bikai app. But when we launched BIC, we made sure that our Bikai merchants are not left out. So in Bikai app inside, we have given light version of BIC and they get all the capabilities inside Akshay. Okay. Amazing.
00:40:18
Speaker
Today, you're essentially not an e-commerce enablement like a digital shop front company, you're more of a SaaS company now. Like a SaaS company for e-commerce marketing. Yes, marketing e-commerce solution now.
00:40:34
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. So what about the agency business? Like you were acting as an agent. No. So yeah, we are doing, but we are, we have stopped acquisition for that model and that acquisition stopped on September 1st. Like we want to, there are merchants who are using our service. We want to keep continuing our efforts on them, but we also take some hard calls on people. I would say wouldn't deliver great results and would.
00:41:03
Speaker
tell them that, okay, we cannot continue because eventually, until now, we haven't been able to deliver great results, we won't be able to deliver even in the future. So that part we're stopping, but the merchants whom we had cracked, which were the majority of our merchants, cracked really well. We're getting really great products for them. We'll continue to offer our service until they want, but eventually we'll move them to PIC because we also truly believe that PIC would be a better solution than them running such manual apps on Google Facebook.
00:41:32
Speaker
It's an alternative. If you see macroeconomics of the environment right now, the D2C branch, like the fundraising has become really difficult. For them, it's all about spending less and getting more ROI. And big is the perfect solution for any business who's running online or even retail businesses, I would say. Crunch more from your existing users, or even if you're acquiring new users, acquire at a lower cost. So use big instead of doing manual arts. Okay, okay.
00:42:01
Speaker
Do you want to productize that agency business of doing ads for SMEs? Because that could be a big opportunity, right? For India, I mean.
00:42:10
Speaker
It definitely is a huge opportunity, but the analytics that we have so far, it says that SMBs try to put in a lower budget on the advertisements they want to run. So let's say they cannot spend. For us, the sweet spot was the average check size they were putting on ads was 30,000 rupees per month.
00:42:32
Speaker
and we used to charge 20% of the expense. So it was a great business model, but from a perspective of the amount they want to put, 30,000. It becomes difficult to deliver results in an automated version. If it's a managed service, you will spend a lot of time doing it. You will deliver it. In the end, unit economics works out because you have to put in man-force.
00:42:55
Speaker
But you need a much bigger monthly ad spend to really show results. And how did you go global? Does it mean like setting up a sales team or a marketing team? What is the way in which you go global?
00:43:22
Speaker
So, when we were building BIC, it was a small project of sorts. I still remember talking to one of our product managers telling him, how are you doing? How are you doing? I said, well, how are you doing? I said, well, I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing anything. I said, well, when we'll hit 100 million dollars, then we'll go to Hawaii.
00:43:46
Speaker
and that's how it started. I would say going global is more about culture internally, it's about the mindset that you have to change because just hiring a salesperson asking him to start prospecting leads from a different geography and selling to them, it's not how it works. It is doable, but as a brand, as a culture, as a mindset of employees who are working here, they should feel global first. So for that, what we did was we did a lot of number one activities of do's and don'ts.
00:44:18
Speaker
Do you think an American would like it? If answer is no, that means it's not right. Second thing, if you are coming to office, you are not even greeting people. This is how it happens. The answer is no. So this is not how we are going to do it. So we first changed ourselves internally. It took us a month.
00:44:38
Speaker
Then automatically when everyone starts thinking global, everyone starts thinking international is when the ideas that get implemented becomes international. So even product thinking, like if the culture is not set of a global first company, and for us it was difficult because we were coming from an SMB background. If
Vision for a Global SaaS Company
00:44:55
Speaker
the culture is not set that way, you will just pick up your call, you will call Indian D2C brand, ask them, I am building this product.
00:45:02
Speaker
No, this is not how it works. You have to think first in product, in brand building, in the support that we offer in the customer success team, in the sales team. So first we did that. Now is the time when we are setting up our team for global markets, for example, sales etc. Product thinking, it's a continuous product process that will keep evolving for building our company. So that's how we did it.
00:45:26
Speaker
And how are you acquiring customers for BIC? Like, BIC-I would have been the only Facebook driver, right? Because it's the easiest place to target SMBs and whatever for BIC.
00:45:37
Speaker
We are back at different because check size is high. So we first connect people whom we want to onboard and then reach out and use them. So they're very different like outbound words. Like prospecting and that kind of guard. Okay. Okay. Okay. And so then you subsequently after the 2 million round, you raised another round in 21. Tell me about that.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah, it was our series A, and again, we didn't have any plans of raising funds, honestly. So it was April, late April, when we were doing our normal work, sitting at homes, because again, I think COVID second wave had ticked in, and we couldn't go to office. So we were sitting at home, wondering, there are a lot of things that can be done.
00:46:23
Speaker
And we thought like things are great in terms of the growth that we are seeing. But there were a lot of models in the market of share who were making a lot of revenues. We started exploring them, not our space. Space who used to sell subscriptions but baking. So, for example, health care space, health define me, etc.
00:46:40
Speaker
It takes place. We were selling courses, etc. and making money. So that intrigued us a lot. Because we didn't have any sales team. We started studying their models and we thought, okay, so we are also selling subscription. We should also build our sales team. But for sales team, we need money. So that's our email to Sequoia.
00:47:08
Speaker
Whether it was very quick, the round was closed soon. And yeah, it took three months in the paperwork, etc. And that's how the idea of raising funds came into our minds and we did it. And this was relatively easy because you already had a tax record of revenue, growth, and a YC tag also. Like all of these things would have helped.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah, this has helped the image. Major thing that has helped us is keeping that differentiating factor in the market. At that time when we were raising A, there was none of the companies who were actually selling subscriptions in the SMB space. We were the only ones doing it. Our differentiating factor of only catering to quality merchants was something that made it easier. Okay, okay, okay. I guess your competition today would be something like a Dukhan.
00:47:55
Speaker
Yeah, from outside, it looks like it. But if we see holistically, one of the people who actually paid 30,000 bucks and used the solution, there were none. Because even the small players, either back then, they were just free, or they were charging 5,000 rupees annually, 6,000 rupees annually. But if you see from check size, 30,000 would be paid by a merchant world. It is doing, I would say, 70-80 lakhs of annualized turnover. So, it was a sweet spot, I would say, Akshay, because competitor-wise, it's probably not.
00:48:26
Speaker
Dukar is more of 5-6,000. They are more mass market. Yeah, that's what I see on website. Okay, so there's no direct competitor for you at that like a slightly bigger size.
00:48:39
Speaker
Acquisition was never a problem because we had a head start. Initially, we were charging something, others were free, so we kept increasing our check size. Most of the other tech companies are going free-rooted.
00:48:59
Speaker
Correct. Yeah, for us, whenever there was this article about Kirana tech or Dukhan tech, they always said players like, Bikai was never focused on Kirana, I would say. Journey started from grocery stores, but that grocery store also looked very different. It was not that neighborhood, very small Kirana store who was doing 1 lakh, 1.5 lakhs monthly, no. There were always bigger merchants using Bikai, but there were also SMBs.
00:49:25
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Amazing. So what's your vision for the company now, like next couple of years? Where do you see it going?
00:49:32
Speaker
Vision is the same as what it was on day zero when we were starting out, which was to make businesses successful. And maybe that vision has brought us to build big, that vision has brought us to start marketing solutions. So vision remains same. But from an execution point of view, Akshay, it has changed completely. Like we want to become that global company, whom people don't see. For example, if you see any Indian other size company, they are taken
00:50:00
Speaker
as a cheap version of the existing solutions. Let's say for the CRM market, et cetera, they think that the India company adopts their solution at a cheaper cost, but it's as efficient as others know. We want to create a mindset that we charge even higher than our global competitors, but the things that we provide you are world-class. So our vision is to become that world-class SaaS company who's giving you things which are world-class, but at an additional cost. It's not a cheap alternative to the things
00:50:30
Speaker
you see in the market. Are there alternatives to globally without helping in e-commerce and marketing? Marketing. There are a lot of companies but not any direct competitor if you see the offerings because it has become a one-stop solution for your marketing and also support needs. Retargeting, you can enable growth, you can do CRM, etc. It's because our insights, three years of insights into e-commerce has made us better this product.
00:50:56
Speaker
and running a marketing solution for at least 5-6 months, managed services has made this product. So, none of them cater to this offering, but there are a lot of companies who are doing, working in the e-commerce marketing space. It's actually a very big space. The way in which you help this to market is largely WhatsApp chats.
00:51:15
Speaker
Right now, yes. So today evening we are launching a new version which will have Instagram and Facebook Messenger as well. So evolving it because there are major West countries who are not using WhatsApp as their primary channel. They use Prime Message, they use Facebook Messenger, they use something else. So we'll have to get to that. Oh, okay. What about notifications? Notifications, language, etc. Those kinds of notifications.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that could lead the customer to have an app, right? If they don't have an app, then notifications won't work. But all the notifications are not like... Yeah, they are not a big use case. But people do ask this. Notification could be something that our product roadmap could evolve to Akshay. But right now, we haven't thought of anything. We are right now focusing more on conversational use cases, like WhatsApp and other channels getting introduced with other channels.
00:52:11
Speaker
and also building right capabilities to support those channels like CRM, bots, etc.
Sunakshi's Insights and Lessons for Founders
00:52:17
Speaker
And at the same time, because this product relies on the number of customers this brand has, we wanted to introduce a growth module which will help them to increase the number of customer base they had. So they can put widgets on their website, they can put a really good reel on their Instagram. So this would be the focus right now and then we'll keep expanding our
00:52:38
Speaker
No, what about emails? Again, email is like, the open rates are dismal, like percent or less. It is in India, but outside. But definitely even in the US, if you see iMessage is better than emails. And also emails is a very crowded market talk. There are really great players already have done this, executed this game really well. So maybe it could be something that on a very late roadmap, just to have a full solution.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, because for the customer, he would not really like to have a separate place for his email marketing. Correct. It should be a one-stop solution. Yeah. Especially I think a bandit guy, like at least most e-commerce sites do a lot of email marketing around that.
00:53:22
Speaker
Correct. In fact, we did one broadcast of the segment that our strategy manager had created for the brand that we had recently onboarded. And they ended up getting 600x returns from the campaign that we had sent. So it's like only signs are only. Amazing. Okay. Cool. Cool. What is your own headcount now? So we are around 150 plus people in the organization. Sure.
00:53:49
Speaker
And what's the split, like how many in customer support, how many in sales, how many in tech? Majority are tech and product. So around 110 people are in tech and product. So we are heavily investing in R&D. 40 are even in 40, 10 are in HR, 7, 8 are in finance. So our support and sales team is very small right now, around 20 people, 25 people.
00:54:10
Speaker
And that's because of the product mindset, like you're trying to build a product that's so strong that it doesn't need support. Yes. Investing Avenue in R&D, and especially you see, it's a great time to invest in R&D. You can build a product in the, like looking at the market sentiments right now, build a product for them and then scale it up when the time is right. Amazing. Okay. Why do you have a 10 member HRT? Like that sounds overkill.
00:54:34
Speaker
Thank you for your feedback. They are also multitaskers, I would say. So they help in managing the office building like admin. So two, three people do that. Then we are also hiring our sales team because now we have to scale up our multi-geography sales team that we are building. So these are like multiple use cases and performance management. Yeah, it's an overkill, but I really love all of them. Okay. Okay.
00:55:00
Speaker
Have you felt that being a woman founder is tougher than being a male founder or any lessons for women who are aspiring for entrepreneurship? There is nothing dumb. In fact, I feel I have not been a man myself, but I feel that it's easier to be a woman founder than a male founder because first of all, people will never treat you bad in the first corner at least. They'll have some decency when they come to you.
00:55:26
Speaker
So, that's one thing that I felt and I feel it's a power. It's a power that a female founder should leverage while building the company, that no one will rate you badly, at least in the first instance, but later it will evolve to depend upon the nature and the culture of the person. But fortunately, never in our journey of company building, fundraising or any interaction, I have felt any kind of
00:55:49
Speaker
Disadvantaged being a woman founder and also from Akshay, I would say too much depends on your upbringing. So in my family, I never even got this thinking in my mind that males and females get different treatment. I have my brother in my house and in fact, I feel I get better treatment than him.
00:56:10
Speaker
being the little child in the house so never felt that in the upbringing so maybe that could be a reason whenever I go through something I never see the negative part of it I always think positive aspect of everything I do so never felt and the message to all female founders would be never go into what they read in media that they are just 5% or 6% of female led companies becoming XYZ never read that it's never this is like a
00:56:35
Speaker
Random analytics that people are throwing outside in the world, just believe in your skills, believe in your talent, believe in your passion, I would say.
00:56:45
Speaker
So what are your top three lessons as a founders, things which you realize that you needed to change about yourself? Still in the learning phase, but I would try to call it like few pointers. Number one is keep your ego small. This is something that takes some time to digest and ego, I would say is there will be a lot of setbacks. There will be people coming to your face and telling you that this is not going to work. This is
00:57:10
Speaker
Completely bullshit. You should not even focus on that. Those are like few lines that you will keep hearing in your journey, especially if you're bootstrapping early in your journey. This will be very common statement that you'll keep hearing. Don't listen to them, but at the same time, keep your egos low. Just don't just go back and say, please don't do that. Keep your egos low. Stay grounded, but keep working hard. That's one lesson. The second is challenges will come in life. It will be in one form or other.
00:57:40
Speaker
And it should not be taken as a setback, it should be taken as a comeback of sorts. And the more you grow, the more would be the people or the circumstances that will try to pull you back. Just always take it positively that if someone is pulling you back, that means you have grown to a standard that they've felt of pulling you back. Just think it positively again.
00:58:03
Speaker
Third, actually be honest and do the right things. That is very easy to slip into a lot of things. Maybe it could be pressure from anyone in your company or externally, making you do things, those are not right. Or maybe there would be things that you really don't support. So let's say, for example, if you're not
00:58:22
Speaker
liking someone's work and but you aren't able to communicate to them that this is not the right place for you because somewhere emotion comes into the picture, how do I fire this person etc. Please do the right thing for the company, do the right thing for the people who have believed in you and just follow that. So these are like few things.
00:58:43
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to this show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in this show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.