Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Serving SaaS tools to restaurants | Ashish Tulsian @ Posist
295 Plays2 years ago
Running a restaurant is incredibly operations-heavy, and making it profitable is even harder. Ashish discusses how he developed Posist to streamline operations and enhance profitability for his restaurant. He reveals insights into building a prosperous global SaaS business.
Read the text version of the episode here.
Read more about Posist:-
1.For NewGen restaurateurs, technology is a natural starting point: Ashish Tulsian
2.POSist Expands its Cloud-Based Restaurant Platform for F&B Industry
3.POSist Takes Marketplace Route To Boost Foodtech Adoption, Digitise Restaurants
5.POSist Bridges Technology Gap In The Restaurant Industry, Introduces An Integrated Marketplace
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ashish Tulsian's Ventures
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, I'm Ashish Pultian. I'm the founder and CEO of Tosses, and I'm really excited for my podcast production.
00:00:18
Speaker
A lot of my friends dream of opening restaurants. It is such an accessible dream. Quit your job, make food you are passionate about, in a location you are passionate about, and if you are good at what you do, the customers will throng to your restaurant.
Restaurant and Tech Entrepreneurship Journey
00:00:32
Speaker
Ashish Tulsian is a serial entrepreneur who had a similar dream. While running a profitable bootstrap tech business, he started a restaurant on the side. But he soon realized that running a restaurant is incredibly operations heavy, and making it profitable is incredibly hard.
00:00:47
Speaker
But not one to give up, he decided to use his tech background to make software tools to help him manage the restaurant. And in the last 10 years, those tech tools have evolved into a full-fledged restaurant SaaS product called Posist. Posist is a rare SaaS business that is both global and profitable. And in this very special episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, Ashish Thilsian spills the beans to Akshay Dutt on what it takes to build a successful global SaaS business.
00:01:15
Speaker
Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast and any audio streaming app to learn how to build large profitable businesses with a global footprint through bootstrapping. I wanted to do videos as far as I can remember. I probably wanted to do videos in fifth club.
00:01:45
Speaker
And I genuinely
Influences and Early Tech Ventures
00:01:46
Speaker
attempted to instruct my first start-up when I was in my asylum. This was the end of my 2000 year old dark old boom. And I don't know if you remember this or not, or if you came across this or not, there used to be this first magazine in the old chip. This magazine used to come with a CD. A lot of such magazines, which would have a CD.
00:02:15
Speaker
After the reason, there was BP quest, data quest, computers at home, chip, and then eventually it became a digit. So I knew all these magazines. I remember April 1998 was the first issue option. And I think I bought that 100 rupees magazine back in 1998. 100 rupees was technically too much for a magazine. And I got had one computer early as well. So my dad got that computer back in 1993.
00:02:45
Speaker
And that was again, like in your condition time. But when I remember, like all those magazines had a big impact on me. So from 98 to you can say, up till 2006, these eight years, I used to read five or six computer and tech magazines. And I used to read them front to back. I used to like, I used to just, you know, absorb everything like a sponge.
00:03:13
Speaker
One of the things that happened is that in 1990, Chip used to be full of these hydrodysmics of building up in company, web hosting companies and whatnot. And I got fascinated and I was like, all right, I'm going to kill you. I built a legit business by corn. I was in Delhi, so Gurgaon was getting a lot of these new aids. Ivy League grads were the new sales people. So I remember some of them were empowering
00:03:42
Speaker
I called one of these companies and I called them and I said, Hey, I want to make a portal. And the guy on the other side was like, what? I said, I want to make a portal. He said, you mean you want to make a website? I said, no, no, no. I want to make a portal. I want to make a dynamic, you know, stuff, not a, not a lovely starting website. The guy who started, he tried, whoa, like this, the story is the most qualified lead he has got on. And he sent the guy, you know, to my home.
00:04:11
Speaker
in scratching feet of me made in Delhi. And this guy came and I opened the door and he came and he kept on looking for the man. That he and I was like, you know, like a ninth standard kid.
00:04:28
Speaker
Correct. And this guy looked like having water, kept on looking at him, and he's like, Mr. Tuthiel? I said yes. He said no. I mean, Mr. Ashish Tuthiel. I said yes to me. And I saw him jaw dropping. I saw him getting disappointed with life.
00:04:50
Speaker
And in that moment, I was like, what have I done? The guy is not going to speak to me when you're not confident. But my dad is also going to join the meeting. So you just sit down and I come back. And my dad was taking an afternoon nap and I walked in and I said, get any come out. And he said, but for what? I said, you know, the guy you need to sit with me in the meeting.
00:05:12
Speaker
I said, he said, but what do I do there? I said, don't do anything. Whatever I'm saying, just say yes to it. So my dad, I keep sat down in that meeting and it took like good 15-20 minutes of conversation where I was the one who was speaking and this guy was continuously looking at my dad and replying and like it took 15-20 minutes for me to win over him. That okay, I'm not stupid and he started making it.
00:05:38
Speaker
So I did that. I bought some web space. I bought the domain name and both the network filling can go to the only domain and registrar. So I used to spend money from here. So I did all of that. And then in 10th standard, then my dad was investing this money on me. And it was quite neat money I feel at times.
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, you're making him spend 32,000 rupees then, because I remember I bought weft space, I bought weft space for 16,000 rupees, 16 MB weft space, and I bought a domain name for 8,000 rupees per year. And because I wanted a larger commitment, I booked it for two years. And that domain name was Yoot Haidaman. So then my dad convinced me, and after that he said, I spent 20 for you.
00:06:29
Speaker
You have the website for the next few years. You can do whatever you want. You make a project, try, do whatever. You have to commit one thing, now that I'm on your side.
00:06:39
Speaker
You have to crack your things well, but the usual shit, right? Make blackboard terms and then like a set type. So he convinced me I was also kind of disarmed now, right? He went for you to log in for me and like, I don't speak now. So I basically got segment to that, you know, 10th completed, you get segment to this IDJ, prep, 11th, 12th. But I think from that,
00:07:01
Speaker
10th class, I found myself straight into first year of college. I mean, in between, it was a block. So after that happened, I started my first started in second year. And the day I started that, I actually, you know, told by then exactly the same thing. I said, you know what, I'm exactly not doing what I wanted to do five years back. So, and he was like, all right, you're free now. I'm not going to ask you to even complete it and do whatever you want. I'm okay.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, so you say I think something something inside me will definitely be bad that I want to start. I don't know where it came from. But yeah, I mean, you know, it was definitely very you started. You thought about what, like a community portal or what? Never, never happened.
00:07:54
Speaker
So basically, I used that domain and web space to learn a lot of web technology. I kept on hosting pages on that. I learned how to develop website. So I think that remained a very experimental domain for me for a couple of years. It never got better.
00:08:12
Speaker
Okay, okay. So then what did you actually do as a business? Obviously by the time you were finishing your engineering, you would have thought of earning money. No, no, no. So I think that I might be able to start a relationship, like I was just waiting for the estate velocity, you know, my parents' clause or whatever the society clause, and that was always for me. So
00:08:40
Speaker
But here I, you know, of course, lived around in college and then on the corporate court quantity. Which year is first year? 2003. Yeah. So, so I didn't mind getting between 2003 and 20. And that's what I think 10 class was 2000. So 2003, I am just children now and I, you know, I usually live and spend it's like on his leg. Wow.
00:09:07
Speaker
I was more interested in doing helping out. But then by the end of taking to the store, which would be end of first year, I've got to eat more. And I was like, okay, now if next three years in engineering, I'm going to be a copy paste of your wallet, this is going to be super boring. And I'm not interested in this. If I can do any of that, like the internet.
00:09:28
Speaker
In the second year, I started playing with the idea and I started wondering what is it that I can do. These are not the days of startups.
00:09:40
Speaker
I think if you have to apply your icons, there were none of them, but they were not popular. So Sanjeev Bikchandali of North Kri was a big one. Anno Smith of Jobthehead.com was there. Aldo K.R.U.A.L.S. Qantas to win years to win their Bishal
Telecom Industry Exploration and Exit
00:09:54
Speaker
Kundal in their game. These were the few icons, the Make Quite Fair and so on, right? But these were the dot com guys. They were the guys who basically crossed over the dot com bust.
00:10:08
Speaker
And, you know, as a mind content creator, my curiosity made me, you know, read so much about these things that honestly, when I started like that company and I met all these people and now, you know, I know one of them, but when I met them for the first time,
00:10:25
Speaker
I actually could tell them by date or by months, by years, what did they do when. And I remember when I was talking to, I was talking to Dinesh Agarwal of indiamarne.com and while talking something and he said, Oh, by the way, in India, while back in the day, we did that. I said, yeah, I remember October of 1990. And it was like, how old I did it? That's 20 years back.
00:10:52
Speaker
You said, how the fuck do you know this? I said, yeah, it feels like a long time, but honestly, your journey, so much new though there, that it always feels like I live there. So, yeah, so I started talking to the idea. And I think these were not the new started days or started days at all. My idea was that I want to do one journey. I wanted to figure out if I can bridge something.
00:11:20
Speaker
that somebody can pay from people. And logic was very clear that if I can charge you $2, I'll figure out how to make $2,000 or $2,000. But let me flow to validate if my skill or market to me, if my production can see some commercial value. So we started building website. I wrote in a friend of mine, we started building
00:11:47
Speaker
How did you get business? Did you also advertise in magazines? No, no, no, no. I think this was very word of mouth, you know, sort of thing. For example, I remember the first hustle and I wish you didn't, you know, want ideas when you get by the lady on Indian system, school, birth type. I remember my first, I remember my fourth hustle was
00:12:09
Speaker
schools that fight back into the recall and you know, I said, all right, I'm going to approach my own school. And I will, I mean, you know, I was a good academic student and not that I was thriving for it. And I say this very, very humbly, but I was like one of those guys who were, who were scoring well by name. So, so Michael, good teacher, my principal Neome type.
00:12:34
Speaker
So I said, all right, I have access to my school and I have access to my principal. I'm sure I'm going to get a business there. So I remember I thought something like that. We built a prototype of a full portal for school. I think there's, you know, one of our parents in Seattle.
00:12:53
Speaker
uh so we went in pitch of course didn't get any any business uh because i was also player that i'm not going to give it for free and i'm only going to give it to somebody who pays me money and so i think that's first break one
00:13:10
Speaker
I think today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today,
00:13:24
Speaker
agent. So they used to be right and he gave us the requirement of a very simple small software. And I said, all right, we can make it. And I think I quoted some 15,000 rupees. This guy gave me a check of 5,000 rupees at once. And I liked doing that in the game. And I think we quoted that over the month, we delivered the first conversion to him, you know, that month.
00:13:50
Speaker
he gave him another 10,000 to be and why newer we are super happy like you're on cloud nine because for me that 15,000 review
00:13:59
Speaker
I was not really thinking of 15,000 or 15,000. And then of course, we started getting little projects, we built a website for someone and they started doing, you know, going one mile. But then it doesn't do what also happened to this guy called the six months from then. And he said, Hey, can you install the sales office copy on my Tacha, who is in Pani?
00:14:29
Speaker
So, God, we can do that. And we did that. And we charged another 15K. And that made me into a 15K. And that was my first understanding of the difference between services and electronics. And I was like, boss, yeah, product getting it. We're not going to continue, you know, digging these wells every day. You know, make sure that we make it once and then compile. So, that's the stage with me.
00:15:01
Speaker
So then we did a couple of different things.
00:15:07
Speaker
You know, I mean, we kept from getting a different project, but I think you would have hired a person or like the team. Yeah. So, so, so, uh, with the post year, which is my second year of college, we hired all three detail. We took us on office space. Again, this is not the end of who was getting and all of that. So even little talk of window. And thankfully this was also not an era, which is, which, which boggles my mind when I look back.
00:15:35
Speaker
This is not an era where people will appreciate students doing the course, where startup is an absolute no-go, where
00:15:45
Speaker
Engineers are not abandonment, technically, if you want to be that, you'll be working in infrastructure. And the best you can get is BCA, MCA, one of the people, or maybe the pro model is from after they got an IIT. And they also want to work for a company. They don't want to work for an individual, even on a student.
00:16:07
Speaker
I can tell you that these are the days when in 2004, when we opened our first office, a very small office, but in a commercial center. And Delhi is also, you know, it's always any people in Mumbai and Bangalore, because these are the two places where you can open offices in other residential space and you're okay with it. Delhi, not like that. Delhi often have enough of them. So we took a small 300 square feet off you in a commercial space.
00:16:30
Speaker
I remember the first development that we hired, he was six years younger towards. And the only saving grace was that he did not know that we are in college. And we made sure that nobody knew that we are in college. In fact, I think till the time we completed college, we never
00:16:52
Speaker
I mean, we made sure that we don't delete this information. And I think nobody from that era, so funnily, you know, I hired this one, very, very senior guy, later on in the story in Chennai. And that guy in those days was a project manager at Infosys. So he was 10 years experienced already and technically whatever, 12, 30 years, senior 12.
Diversified Business Ventures and Lessons Learned
00:17:18
Speaker
We worked with him, he worked with Antonio, and then he moved on. Yeah, we moved on to that project. Six or four years from then, one day on social, we got his book, I think back in 2011. He'd bring me and he said, she's doomed. I just looked you up. He was calling me.
00:17:40
Speaker
I said yeah. He said how is it not easy? I don't know, it's not possible. He said I won't, I won't get through to you in 2006. I said yeah. So he said you liked me. I said no, you never asked me a question.
00:17:55
Speaker
who's like, fine. So, so I think thanks. Thanks. So she knew that was not, you know, not this, you know, you know, when I think today, I think things have changed in a very interesting way where, you know, I think startups have become so cool that, you know, a student running a startup, people will flock and work for them. That example,
00:18:18
Speaker
I think today things are easier, but in those days, we never told anyone that we are still in college. To be shipped in third year, which was 2005, is when we stumbled upon this opportunity of value editor.
00:18:33
Speaker
SMS-based services, related services in India were still picking up. And we were not even sure that it was all bad then. So it took an year for it to be started calling that. We were just trying to build SMS-based services.
00:18:49
Speaker
And this was the product idea that we stumbled upon while doing services. Because while doing services, there was a point where somebody kept asking us, can you automate the SMS? Can the SMS go? And then we said, all right, I'll let you go without touching the card. And that led us to... So we started the telecom company. We stopped our company in 30 years. And that was 2005. We started the telecom value exit services company. It was going to take no effect.
00:19:17
Speaker
That was a successful run. I came out of college while running that company in 2007. I ended up hiring three of my bad feet into that company. That was quite clientele in those days. I wouldn't be coming about it. And that was a good run because, you know, as I said,
00:19:40
Speaker
Helping businesses with sending promotional and transactional messages? No. So, not promotion. We were doing it. We were doing FMS.
00:19:52
Speaker
for a non-banking client, for mutual fund clients, for insurance companies. So we worked with MetLife insurance, with Love and Life Insurance, and BIA Vision Fund, we did some article volumes of ITSA bank. Then we got into this promotional business with telcos. So telcos, every telecom company had these
00:20:15
Speaker
a promotional campaign of a radio, you call it your own wallpaper, right? So they used to type in others and then Telco used to give their own subscribers database and used to give their own bandwidth. Our game was that we built the SMS gateway. We built the gateway software, which was deployed on an SMS switching figure. So terminology while it basically that and
00:20:45
Speaker
And when telcos used to do these promotions, they used to pay you on the conversion of it. So that was a big business. That was a pretty big business. And so we did all of that. We did not do promotions in marketing. Like this, this was like a primitive programmatic advertising business.
00:21:09
Speaker
I would not even say that, and it was not that intelligent, honestly. I think for us, the baby used to be the kind of thing that we wave into. We used to own the game.
00:21:22
Speaker
gateway was required being scheduled saying maybe the solutions happen because Telco used to only limit their services to anything that applies to a single card because that was Telco's primary business. So they never wanted to get any of that. Us as SMS providers, our understanding was simple but we used to get a bandwidth from Telco. That bandwidth comes in transactions per second. So for example, I can take a
00:21:51
Speaker
I can take a 10PBS pipe from airtime. It means that I have a pipe which will throw 10 SMSs per second. Now you multiply it with time and basically how much can you load the pipe you have been.
00:22:07
Speaker
and they used to charge, let's say, 10 lakh rupees per bike per month. So it will come down to whatever, two-path operation, that's it. So it was a business where, you know, how much can you sell and how much can you use that bike? Because in telecom company, if you think about it, their inventory is airtight. So the time that you are not using your phone, their inventory is getting lost forever.
00:22:35
Speaker
the tide is not going to come back, right? That is exactly why on, you know, festivals, towers get jagged. Because of the air tide, actually each tower works on like a 90% on 10, no day. If a tower can handle, let's say, 100 connection parallelly, it will be distributed to a thousand people.
00:22:58
Speaker
It goes up for new year, things like that.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, it is exactly for the fair reason. A lot of people think that, you know, pricing goes up because then go once you want money. That is also true. But the bigger factor, that if they're not going to increase SMS's price back in the day, nowadays, it's not even there. But if they will not increase the price, you will start sending so many SMS's that their network is going to jab. So they're going to renew the revenue because of the jamming.
00:23:30
Speaker
So we used to increase the price and people used to take all their drive to make money to rent. No, they're trying to detect everything from not sending it to them. So yeah, that was available. We ran that device from 2005 to 2011. So you're earning at the peak? For this company, we had a top line of 8.5kms at the peak.
00:23:55
Speaker
and I think we peaked around 2009. 2009, our billions grew, but our top line fell, because SMS drive is dropped. So, the country went through the SMS ban. So, the SMS that I used to sell for 35 mesa, imagine in January of 2009, I used to sell this message for 35 mesa. In October of 2009, I was telling this message for 3 mesa.
00:24:27
Speaker
Right? But thankfully my volume also grew 20 years. So technically we kept on, that's where we peaked. So by the way, I'm leveling also peaked when it was president's final election. I did a lot of SMS, very flat promotional campaign for political party in 2009. So last two last notes of my election, I made 8B chorord messages for BGP.
Birth and Growth of Posist
00:24:52
Speaker
And yeah, that was the LQR 20 campaign. It was his ambition to be the president of the global history. I think, and we dare you, so much for so many. For example, Aida Andra had a minister called YFNAD. He unfortunately passed away in a crash. So for YFR, I did a campaign in 2009
00:25:21
Speaker
I think we were the guys who spammed every living soul in our draft of this. Right, fraud, campaigning, to all say thank you, after billing. We didn't leave that. Right? So, we slammed everyone. And this was the data given by Tenco. So, technically, we were asking, we were leaving it. But funny thing, what happened, you know, in those days,
00:25:46
Speaker
As soon as the government came in in 2010, they were the ones who said, oh, by the way, there is too much battery. Are you kidding? So one of the reasons we sold off the company existed in 2011.
00:26:04
Speaker
It was not because of any other reason, but because between 2009 and 2011, I could clearly see that this was not good anywhere. So at the peak, you have to answer your question. I think we were doing eight and a half to apply.
00:26:17
Speaker
but he would make one and a half crore profit after that. So I think as a 23, 24 year old, my eco world was pretty high, you know, from that time. And I also kind of got disenchanted, you know, with that money because it's not that I cut your money, nothing, and you should not earn money. It was like,
00:26:42
Speaker
It was like I figured that, you know, I've got to be there, you know, it's not going to change your life anyway. And, um, and, and I started, um,
00:26:54
Speaker
feeling lack of care. I started feeling stuck. Okay. You know, all the clients that I had in telecom, they used to get chopped off by some recognition, DRAI. Another filter that I had, I had to look at it again. At the end, it was quite a trap. And I think my biggest thing was that I had a global ambition, even then. So my ambition was to
00:27:18
Speaker
run a business that I can run in 196 countries and I want to see the world win that business, I want to see what's happening out on the ground. And I think the harder the realization in 2010 was that telecom is one of the most regulated business in every product. Because I was a little too naive and I was also learning my experience. So I remember in 2010, when the idea became active and regulation started picking up,
00:27:42
Speaker
I said, fuck it, I want to see which country in the world has a great telecom thing. I realized, oh wow, even the most liberal country also has a lot of regulation. Then I realized something more fundamental, that no government in this world is going to let go of communication back. So telecom is going to remain regulated. And that was my point where I got
00:28:08
Speaker
Like completely, you know, I was not interested in those people anymore. And I think we said, well, I never think to put my hand in a domain where there is a government regulation than I keep to my videos.
00:28:24
Speaker
unless I am powerful enough to write me long, which a lot of people in our country and a lot of other countries do. So I think that is the time when a lot of consolidation of what's happening was the ND and DIA were killing a lot of people and vast companies were consolidating. Between 2010 and 11, we borrowed more than this consolidation.
00:28:45
Speaker
So, you know, very, very similar call. In those days, those were not just 10 coca-skills. I mean, spy telecom got a sort of idea. And, you know, somebody sometimes spy telecom came out.
00:29:00
Speaker
started doing M&A and you know we got an exit in between and again this was not this is not the tech crunch exit we were not looking for connects and everything right we were very very simple right somebody was giving us seven eight pad and we were like all right here is the key yeah
00:29:19
Speaker
And you had a co-founder here, or you were the son? No, no, I had a co-founder and that was kind of mine. So, you know, in fact, he was the CTO and I didn't claim his name was Richard Davos. So he basically took an exit in 2011 and he had been chilling in Finland.
00:29:41
Speaker
Not that we made enough money to chill for life, but this guy was too chill in his way. So he does a lot of, you know, consulting and open-source work, keeps sitting in London, but he never worked again, technically. Got it. Okay. So what next for you?
00:30:03
Speaker
Well, while this time of disenchantment was going on in 2010, I was also under distracted because the realization was really hard. That, okay, I, you know, I've built this building and looks like this building is not going anywhere. I mean, it will continue growing.
00:30:21
Speaker
20, 30% a year on the year. It was massive. You'd love it. But then, you know, your credit has changed. And as a 22, 23 year old, you know, that 50 lakhs on a current 30 year, charged very, very sweet. And it was sweet. But then you, you know, you, you outgrew it faster than you believe. Right. So, and that's the tag for money. Money is great, but it doesn't really, you know, hold you for long.
00:30:48
Speaker
So I basically started buying a different idea because I reckon we have a tech team and we have product people and probably we'll find something new. And I did a lot of random investments. For example, I put a mineral water plant in Denny Cat area and we started making a scraped
00:31:15
Speaker
you know, mental health department. It doesn't become a big court. The end of the world, sweet, crazy, dirty, like, yes, and it's far and happy. And a series of these things happened. And one of the things was restaurant. So I ended up investing in a restaurant also out of like purely at the moment. And I think, I think it was very stupid as well, because it was like a, it was literally like a 24 year old with a lot of money and
00:31:44
Speaker
What do you think about restaurants? We opened the restaurant in three months. We opened the door of the restaurant within 40 days of discussing where our restaurant is going to be.
00:32:06
Speaker
So things were happening really fast and we of course were overspending all the things which we could have saved money on. And so restaurant was one of the projects which happened in between and it screwed up. Like restaurant was one of the most difficult reasons. It did not only screw us on money, it basically ended up hurting our ego.
00:32:29
Speaker
because we were failing and we were not failing at things which we could solve. For example, if we were failing at food, I would have found that okay. We were failing at managing.
00:32:46
Speaker
Food was great because food is a single point of success and failure. You have a good chef, you're in the game. So we chose the chef, we chose the location of the restaurant, we paid a premium on rent, but we failed on the Mac.
00:33:02
Speaker
We did not realize that our suit pricing and our render and everything, our unit of communication stopped now. We failed on people management. We grossly misunderstood or underrated how difficult it can be to deal with
00:33:21
Speaker
you know, dishwashers, to a temple guy, to a chef or a sous chef or a delivery boy. We grossly mention this from that. I think it is still missing you in today. Especially people who are like white, you know, white con, IP, you know, typing your life on me. You don't know, you don't know what will go on on the ground. Only when you open any kind of buildings on the ground on the door, that's when you realize from the first thing, oh man,
00:33:48
Speaker
like, this is why. And I think these things hurt our ego very bad. And I'm calling it ego because within three months of redstone. So actually, like just to clarify the story, we basically hired a consultant.
00:34:04
Speaker
And this consultant did the whole turn for us. He said, don't worry, you know, give me your money and I will, you know, be the entire magic for you. And he did, he did that pretty well. We were, you know, involved in the nights and parts hatred.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, brand name, you know, tasting of the many. So we were having a lot of fun and we were like, it took me the first three months and your hunger ended. And, you know, one thing that, you know, I plan a lot now, you know, given that I'm on the next front side, you know, restaurant is actually a reverse building. Every other building that you start in the world,
00:34:49
Speaker
You'll know that it will start slow. You will not make any money in one month. It will slowly grow. That's what is exactly the word. You make a lot of money in day one. You make a lot of money in month one. You make a measure in month two, a bit less than a month the reactor for your farm. So it's a problem, right? Because in restaurants where your restaurant opens, you get
00:35:15
Speaker
You people buy curiosity, if you have addition to people you'll come, you get to tell them the price, you get to tell them whatever.
00:35:25
Speaker
It's only very, you know, repeat customer does not happen. That's when you realize you all check, like monthly you've gone, right? So month one, we went corporate. I was like, dude, I was junior. So I think month three, one that it of course started going down and issues started evolving. Month three was also the time when the consultant, you know, we caught him dealing, dealing, managing the account.
00:35:52
Speaker
And because I caught him, we flicked him out. As soon as we flicked him out, everything fell on my shoulders. From right from that Murtin Dhanavalladi and my staff, to delivery people, to new actors in the play, which I didn't even recognize. MCB, Tule, Health Department, Fire Department.
00:36:15
Speaker
And I was like, who are you guys? And why the fuck are you bothering me? And I was in a space where I took all the licenses, I invested money in the right commercial space. So I was also very, very arrogant about it. Because the police father is coming and saying, give all, give me three, four. I was like fucking it. Like, who are you? So I thought with this, I glammed officially.
00:36:41
Speaker
I did all the wrong things in the book and outside of it. And purely because I was right. Because, you know, the arrogance of being right. You know, only to learn the hard way that when you are in the jungle, the rules of the jungle apply. You can, you can decide to not be in the jungle.
00:37:02
Speaker
But if you are in a jungle, you can't decide what news you will play by. You better learn the rules or you'll be crushed. So that happened with me. I learnt it the hard way. First three months, all of this happened without. Third month, all of this happened without. And we wrote off this investment, me and my wife.
00:37:21
Speaker
And me and Pachi, they're all like, fuck it, like you want. And then the ego came in. And then we said, you know, man, we are smart people. How can we come into it? And let's give it one more shot. And because once we pause it, we are writing it up, no? I mean, it just made it, all the pressure made it. And then we thought, all right, we are writing it up anyway. Why not give it one more quarter?
00:37:49
Speaker
And this style, let's read this as arguments. Let's not treat it as a type.
00:37:54
Speaker
And I think the first day we rolled up our sleeves and when we went to the restaurant, feeling that, all right, we're going to fix this shit. We also said, all right, where is the technology? And that's when we said, okay, we are going to fix the tech as well because we want in any video control. We cannot sit in a restaurant anyway. We're going to come here every evening for two hours and so forth. So we started building this product. I pulled out two pieces of my telecom technique.
00:38:22
Speaker
And I said, like, you know, this is the LDP, we need to make it for other strong, nothing else, and go back to doing what you're doing. Practically, those two people continue with us today, one of them is our CPO at Boston.
00:38:36
Speaker
So basically, they never went back. So we ran that restaurant for 22 months. We faked that shit beautifully the next three months. We learned how to be with pundits and departments as well. We learned how to be with staff. The restaurant, we tried to solve the technology. But I think in the highest right,
00:39:04
Speaker
We enjoyed it because once we wrote it all, it became a great experimentation. So we were absolutely fearless because we internalized this.
00:39:20
Speaker
let's know, let's figure out stuff, you know, break things also. So that kind of worked out very, very well. This restaurant was called the Soya Express. It was in the Shalimanabad, North Delhi area. And we ran the floor a little over, I think, 22 months to be precise. And in between, we ended up selling the telecom company. And these were all happening in parallel and universal. And we were already
00:39:49
Speaker
11-month-old with the product that we were using at our own restaurant and other restaurant owners took notice because imagine this, this is 2011, there's no cloud load, my phone is there in the world, but there's a line,
Strategy and Market Adaptation for Posist
00:40:06
Speaker
right? So technically, you know, our regular arm of me does not have the understanding of apps and all of that.
00:40:13
Speaker
and non-smartphone, non-internet deal. And in these days, there are these two youngsters living in a restaurant in a traditional market where average age of a restaurant is 50 plus. And these two people are not even coming to the restaurant. And staff is saying, these guys watch everything remotely.
00:40:38
Speaker
So, we were a subject of envy on all the restaurants that are already. And, you know, the moment the round was, oh, these people run on big non-standard technology. So, normal platform owners started giving us inquiries and we categorically said, no, we were really not interested in selling this product to them because we were like, we don't know what telecoms are going to be. In fact, she was running a web development services company.
00:41:04
Speaker
And both of us were running this restaurant. So we were like, both too much on the plate, not interested in adding a full, you know, eggplant. But then, you know, there came a point where Fronik became really mature and, you know, an ice cream-chilling that he called Gally the Ice Cream.
00:41:26
Speaker
think of it, like for people in Bombay, it can be, it's a way for your natural or environmental corner house, very similar, you know, in Delhi, these guys came to us for help.
00:41:38
Speaker
And they said, we want your talent. And you're like starting, right? I mean, you're like, wow, yeah, these guys actually helped from us. We grew up eating that. So we said yes to them. By this time, product was also quite mature. At least we were able to bring things in our restaurant very, very well. So we said yes to them. And this was, I think, October of 2011.
00:42:02
Speaker
As soon as we said yes to him, we started saying yes to him. On the restaurant as well, we kept on putting back the mask of the month. In no time, we had 30-40 storey who were using electronic or customers. So in January of 2012, we decided
00:42:19
Speaker
to incorporate protest. We also immediately decided to send off the restaurant because we did not want to conflict. A restaurant owner telling a restaurant software was not, you know, feeling well. We were also done with the restaurant. We had to learn whatever reports from that outlet. And we didn't want to do this, so we sold that restaurant to somebody else. That guy also ran it for another three years.
00:42:43
Speaker
afterwards and uh and that's it so jan of 12 actually first of february 2012 is where we started posse uh and we are competing 11 year post-op fan uh why did you call it posse?
00:43:01
Speaker
No, this is a word that I coined. So, billing software, billing system, is generally called the FEOF. It's a short call private sale. So, point of sale or pause was a normal industry term that everybody understood. And so, when we were thinking about the name, we started as a fast company. So, I'm flying anything with a restaurant billing software. So, you know, I coined this word, our data specialist, it's called Vinta.
00:43:32
Speaker
Okay. Interesting. So like you said that when learning the soy express, you wanted to fix problems through technology. So the billing was the problem that you fixed through technology, like making sure. No, no. So, so the problems were, you know, quite
00:43:54
Speaker
So billing itself was not a problem. Billing is the minimum you're clicking that, you know, had there been a lot of solutions for billing of the cell. There were not one prime of the shell, which were working actually fine. Right. I think what we, what we embarked on, like the journey to solution was first of all,
00:44:18
Speaker
staff had a lot of incentive in not giving you bill.
00:44:23
Speaker
basically breaking down that machine, breaking down your truth chip, right? So do you see those play cards? If you don't get a bill, it's free. Imagine the gravity of that statement, a brand like PDR or McDonough or something is putting that card and actually saying that my employee, my teammate is not trustworthy. As a customer, can you please be vigilant on my behalf?
00:44:52
Speaker
Imagine if you are a cashier or if you're a restaurant manager, what do you like to stand behind in that kind of corporate? But, but test in the restaurant space is so normalized that Brad also believed that they need to put that card and the employee is also like, yeah, I understand that, right? So, so one problem was that we wanted to fake that nobody's going to get fooled without, you know, entering it into a system, right? So we wanted to make sure that happens and those kinds of solutions were not enough.
00:45:21
Speaker
We also were born on planet. So you're saying that order taking itself should be captured, like people should be writing order in a notebook. So not believe that actually, what I figured is that, you know, cashier is running the game, right? So cashier has a lot of incentive in, let's say, not billing one Dalmakrei for 200 bucks, right? And Pakani does 100 bucks. So I said, okay, if
00:45:49
Speaker
if there are multiple touch points across the restaurant and the restaurant has 22 people working, right? If multiple touch points, you know, get a part of it, these 200 bucks divided across 22 people is not incentive enough, right? So can you make sure that there are so many touch points that there is no single part of failure? If this guy has to give money, he needs to because you will all take it.
00:46:15
Speaker
which never happened until now. So that was the starting idea, right? So we wanted to, the second thing is that we wanted to make an unbreakable system. And by that, the logic was that with our POSS machine, with our TAP clean system, we also placed a laptop, a standby laptop on the side where we can, hey, if the machine has a problem, start with laptop. And this product POSS, which what it is today, was always born on cloud. It was a browser-borne product.
00:46:44
Speaker
So be better, be better product on browser, because
00:46:49
Speaker
We said that in no way, you know, this guy should say, oh, software required installation again. Somebody has to come and be able to do everything. You're like, no, it has to be online. It has to be there. And we are going to pay extra to make sure that there are parallel internet connection. And we said, we're going to maintain that, but this is not going to go to start. So we never installed the product on our system.
00:47:15
Speaker
Second thing actually what we are trying to also solve was inventory control system. So inventory control you will not believe, I mean it just you know again it just blows my mind. We are in 2023 today and even today inventory control is an underrated problem. People recognize it more today but you know back in the day it was all yet absent. So we wanted to make sure that our recipes are varying. You won't believe what all did be caught
00:47:44
Speaker
We actually realized that a lot of pilferedge in the food was happening or a lot of martin pilferedge was happening because of the recipes. But we also figured that how teething happened, for example, you order 8 kd paleer.
00:48:04
Speaker
You are trying to count how many pieces of money will go in one dish. You are trying to want how many money dishes you could sell with it. But the fact is that for either 100 rupees a kg, I remember, you know, it was 100 rupees a kg, then I don't know how much is it today. We realized that no supplier is only supplying it here. And the guy who is accepting the order in the morning at 8 a.m. is signing on 10 kg.
00:48:34
Speaker
And these guys are distributing 2K worth of money, one money each. Now we only have received 8. Your 20% is out. Things like this. Now how do you catch it? Again, we figured that there is a variance in the behavior. We deployed two different suppliers for each item.
00:48:59
Speaker
and we started figuring out the yield from that item by supplier. And asking if the yield for a supplier dropped, we caught hold of him and we told him that dude, we are going to complain, tell us the reality. I actually got suppliers who actually told me that okay, tomorrow I am going to do something and your guy is going to tell you that there is a complaint in the product.
00:49:27
Speaker
day after, I'm going to give him a bottle of yang and you call him again and he will give you a good treat. Let me show you the demo. I thought, all right. We basically tried to go very, very deep in exactly how we have tackled him, you know, how the mountains, you know. So all of this we were solving through back and we were able to do it, you know, quite well.
00:49:51
Speaker
So like the product you started selling, just tell me the components, when is like the point of sale billing? So when we copied it, it was billing software, we call it print of the house, so point of sale software.
00:50:10
Speaker
And then it was back in inventory control, where you will make a purchase, you'll make a recipe, and it will deduct inventory based on your front and tail. And the third piece was the CRM, where you will go in there, you will take a customer's mobile number, and all that they are ordering, that will remain in the history, the address etc, will remain in the history, and you will be able to take out the CRM data,
00:50:35
Speaker
you know, slotted, you know, water customer life and how much they spend, etc. And you'll be able to run your marketing SMS campaign, we will do our thing as champions anyway. So we basically built that here. So our first product in 2012 was the three components. Pause, inventory control, MGLM.
00:50:58
Speaker
today, today that has grown into 14 different modules. So now it is more complex, right? It starts from people, reservation system on the, on the, on the, that's part of it. So think of it like all the holes in the tablet. So, so that kind of thing. So from reservation system to
00:51:18
Speaker
inside your store, BOF system, to cabinets or mobile phone, the computer carries advice to take your order at your table. Then it goes back to KDF system, which is called kitchen display system, which is what the tickets that go in the kitchen
00:51:35
Speaker
go in the kitchen and it can go like you can order a one-day of knives and a coke and and this order will get disintegrated into three different screens, the coke station price again and above the station and then they will go to an assembler station where all these three components will come and he'll assemble it in one single order and then it will go to a dispatch station where there's going to be a customer fee which will say order number 69 you will go and he will pass it on to you and he will say okay it will be done.
00:52:00
Speaker
So, all the customers are going to be assembling the kitchen and then it goes back to the inventory control and inventory control has another component now. So, there will go, you know, in the restaurant side system and then there's an outside of the restaurant, which is for example, your procurement, your warehouse. As a brand, you can have a central kitchen where you
00:52:24
Speaker
procure stuff, warehouse them, and then cook some intermediate recipe. If you're an Indian restaurant or a Mexican restaurant, you may be making a lot of curries, a lot of, you know, purees and all of that. And they will be transported to the restaurant. If you're a bakery, you may be making punches, a lot of other stuff.
00:52:40
Speaker
So you have a central kitchen, base kitchen. And then our CRM interiors, we don't do marketing piece on it, but we do the pleasure CRM. We also do all kinds of integration here today. So he is the motto in India, you know, Hanukkah, Jason, Jahil, Dilavru, Talabah, Middle East, Eliana. So we integrate all these aggregators into the product. So when you order, this order land in the restaurant in fraction of a second.
00:53:09
Speaker
because, you know, whenever we get there, 30 seconds can we make a break or a brand. And then we also have a product which powers all trainers of some of the large brands because, for example, even in India, when nobody's actually technically calling to play the order, bust.
00:53:26
Speaker
Let's say a brand has 100 stores across India. They want a central control center, which actually keeps the water on which outlet is getting water from where and is that water getting accepted on time? Then over time, they have a control center. A lot of countries outside of India are still getting calls and like a massive number of calls. So we basically have a cloud call center product, but this call center is also a clean call center. So all our protein products are in the response tray.
00:53:54
Speaker
We have a product called Cloud Kitchen, which is a very, very specifically Cloud Kitchen management product. We have a product which works in banqueting and catering. So we work with Manic Hotel, but we only do the F&B side for them. We work with a lot of hospitals. F&B, we recently, you know, we powered sports stadiums and sports cities. So we were the, you know, we were powering people, stadiums, food, this type. So that was a big one for us.
00:54:24
Speaker
I want to understand this inventory slash purchase really better. So if a restaurant buys a software then do they have to first of all upload all the menu and then for each menu item do they have to like specify that say paneer makhani needs 200 grams of paneer and tomato puree and these. So they have to enter the entire STU.
00:54:50
Speaker
they have to make a full recipe and the recipe will be really granular. They will say, all right, you know, one portion of paneer makhrini is going to be like 350 grams. And you know, and what our front will do is the restaurant does not do the recipe of 350 grams of paneer makhrini.
00:55:14
Speaker
Right, so Chef will say, alright, I know how to make 10KG per unit mercury. So he will make the recipe of 10KG per unit mercury, our software will portion it, you know, and portion wise, there's going to be a one portion recipe and
00:55:33
Speaker
And every time, you know, if we also do things like, you know, some very interesting innovations. For example, people in the restaurant, they don't necessarily use the same unit of measurement for a certain item in which they buy.
00:55:57
Speaker
For example, they can buy soil in kgs, but when he is writing the recipe, he will say it also.
00:56:08
Speaker
Correct. There can be other factors as well. For example, in India, especially North India, when they buy line, right? So they will not say quintal or kd. They will say ek katnari. Now start applying like one, you know, word that they're using to define the 40EZ rise. So what we did is let our product also allow them to create their whole unit.
00:56:36
Speaker
buy in their own unit and consume in their own unit and it is interchanging into the unit which means reporting.
00:56:45
Speaker
My very first job when I was about 17, 18 was McDonald's. Like the restaurant was at 11 and from 11 to 12 one hour the manager would be sitting. All the cardboard, he will be continuously measuring everything. Very fascinating.
00:57:11
Speaker
So tell me about your customer acquisition journey. So initial customer acquisition was organic. How did you scale that?
00:57:22
Speaker
Well, I think the customer journey was quite a journey and I think it continued. I don't think anything has changed, just that we have become either a little better or to the challenge. I don't know which one. But I think the biggest challenge that hit us as soon as we started for it was
00:57:47
Speaker
this realization that the restaurant owner does not have a degree, does not have a qualification, does not come from a certain background. The problem is that a lawyer went to law school.
00:58:03
Speaker
and knows other lawyers. And Dr. Vaidu Medical School knows other doctors. Restaurant owner can be a property dealer, can be a lawyer, can be a EA, can be a engineer, can be anyone. And the problem is that based on their background, they will think about their restaurant they can drink.
00:58:21
Speaker
Somebody who will, you know, coming from a media background and if he starts a restaurant, he'll be very, very high on branding and messaging and content. While a property owner will be too big on the location and everything can be very awkward. And the chef will be too much fascinated by food and he will probably think about it differently. So we realize.
00:58:40
Speaker
This one is that it dissolves in the behavior and the temperament of our persona. And you're like, Oh man, what have we done? Because now I can't define my persona and have a single messaging for them. I need to tailor it based on who am I talking to. And the second biggest challenge, or rather it was the first challenge in the order was because anybody can get this from the room. No, my targeting is fun.
00:59:12
Speaker
I remember Thakto Shashant is a dear friend and Thakto also started like a year before or two years before us. So we used to chat a lot. And I used to be so envious because you know, so Thakto said to me, oh dude, we find this dentist and he has a seven brain and he is all in the corner. And now I'm like, you know what, mine is exactly the worst. Number one, I,
00:59:36
Speaker
If I've been over a restaurant in Europe and if I've found it to them, one, if they don't know any of the restaurant owner, two, the ones they know are also the restaurant owner operating in their job office area. So they term them as competitors and they don't want to refer us because if our software is working for them, they look at us like a best kept secret. They don't want, they don't want bajuola restaurant owner to know
01:00:05
Speaker
that okay, this will give you more power. So be on the female acquisition journey, you know, started with these challenges, like raw, but real challenges. And we, I think first year, we
01:00:20
Speaker
experiment a lot. And our experimentation went wired. Like we did everything that we could afford or responsibly. So right from making the listing on indiamart.com, buying a package from just Guile, doing of course good on FEO, trying to run, you know, paid ads.
01:00:49
Speaker
to booking a storm, a trade show, finding anything that looks like a restaurant conference or hospitality conference, knocking the door on restaurant and hospitality associations,
01:01:08
Speaker
to deploy the T and lock and go. So we did literally everything. And we started quantifying and disqualifying because one of the biggest issues also was that
01:01:25
Speaker
you know, there was not enough searches for our category. So we were actually very ahead of our time. And I'm actually grateful to myself and Sakshi and everybody else who's stuck around because we can save this today because we survived. And tightly, you know, these kinds of victims are all the anxieties.
01:01:50
Speaker
2012, but how ahead we got off on time, I would have said more. I think we only realized it in 2016. Honestly, the first realized yesterday, when I really pray, he owe shit. I think we were too ahead of on time, but we survived. So that wasn't 20. Tell you why.
01:02:13
Speaker
Yeah. Why were you ahead of your time? Was it because it was a subscription that nobody used to buy subscription? No, not only that, that was of course one of the parts, but I think we were too ahead of our time at a fundamental level. Let me start with this. We started in an era where
01:02:34
Speaker
Premium generation, our payment generation, and one still in power, especially in the restaurant space. So the average age was very, very high. Two, internet penetration was genuinely poor, and internet speeds were mainly bad, and internet was, you know, not reminding. Three, this is not an error of tablet as it's working. So people are not used to app,
01:03:01
Speaker
People are not used to BIY. I don't know if many people realize this or not, especially, you know, all generation, you know, 85, 95 born, you know, people. I think if you look, you will realize that one of the biggest transformation, behavioral transformation that has happened all over the world, especially India, is that a country which used to, which was the normal way of dealing born, that we will have somebody else do something wrong.
01:03:32
Speaker
became BIY, right? Because it's a personal device, it actually changed people's behavior toward BIY. And that approach in itself is a big slop sheet, leading to 20,000 other things. Anyway, so we were ahead of our time. One, because of the infrastructural rate, right? Second, we were ahead of our time because this was also the era when people were not buying stock.
01:03:59
Speaker
People were still, like our parent generation, they only got a computer. A computer, voila, installed the windows pirated, office pirated, tiny pirated, everything pirated. So these guys, it's not like they were my girls.
01:04:16
Speaker
It can't even occur to them, right? Pay for software. Pay for software look like a client, right? Anything that you can't touch and feel, and you can't own, and it's not an asset in your book, your form. You don't pay for service. So, and in that era, we were trying to share a cloud-based point of interest, which requires internet, is not going to be installed in your system,
01:04:42
Speaker
It's going to remain online and to make matters worse, this is also the era because previous generation is in power. Everybody is trying to unveil. They're trying to feed the back and they have shit scared about anything that is online. So there's EA thinking, don't take on the software. Your entire detail will go to government and people will like horrified. So you are ahead of our time?
01:05:09
Speaker
in these aspects, right? Practically from an ecosystem perspective as well and by a change in 2020 is that we also weren't ahead of our time because this was also an era where online ordering is not happening, online payment is not happening, products are not integrating with each other. You are not always on the move.
01:05:33
Speaker
So your Kavkinar is actually fitting at his or her own restaurant the entire day. You can't replace that humor with the software. We've had a funny incident where in RK Purnam in Delhi, a very very popular basically, one of our sales guys back in 2012, one day made the sale, came out very happy.
01:05:55
Speaker
And it was like, you were, I think, selling for 12,000 rupees for restaurant, but it was a very, very cheap drive. It was still costly for people because they were not used to paying for the software, and even if they were used to paying for the software, it was like a one-time $5,000 rupee.
01:06:13
Speaker
And we were saying that we are charging 12,000 rupees every year. So people used to be like, you know how we used to sell? We used to convince people why they behave. Okay, let us assume this is 12,000 rupees one time. You use it for this year. If you don't like it, you will not undo it any year. So why are you threatening your 12,000 rupees?
01:06:32
Speaker
You know, so we basically did a lot of stuff, sending it on. This guy came back and he said, okay, I've heard of this legend, I call it baby, you know, all is done. I said, okay. Two days from then, I'll be in a call from that guy and he was abusing and shouting and he was like, he was like, guys, you come back, I put my money, you don't pay your product down. And this guy went, and I told him, okay, you know, will you go there? You know, like, calm him down.
01:07:01
Speaker
Let me let me talk to him. So the story was that this guy and he had just joined. And first thing that he tried to do was to replace Papa with boss.
01:07:20
Speaker
So, and Baba was the one who triggered this, and he said, fuck you, and you know, nothing doing, and you bloody get your 40 ass on the counter every day. So, the Uncle G was like, you know, of course, he was like, my, my, he, by the way, he was one of you, he was a bully.
01:07:40
Speaker
It's like, you know, my son is like, like a stupid fellow and he has done it. I had so many requests, whatever, you know, damage evidence to you guys, please take that money, but please defend my money. So I had to try to get an accident because, you know, is there a problem with the software agent? No, there's no problem with the software agent, but I really want to help. Okay.
01:08:01
Speaker
He said, why should I have your song? I said, okay. Now, this is the classic story. Have you heard the joke of, you know, I mean, generally people call it, I mean, the name that we get once went to a fisherman and fisherman will clip it. And we'll get that, he said, hey, why are you clipping? He said, I have the couch in the day.
01:08:22
Speaker
He said, okay, but then why are you not catching more? He said, what will happen if I do that? He said, you'll be able to sell more. He said, then, you'll make more money. Then, you'll have more fishing nets. He said, then, we'll get a horse take to like large fishery. He said, then you tell your fishery company and sit back and relax. He said, what do you think I'm doing right now?
01:08:44
Speaker
So, I never had a moment with this uncle, wherein when I said uncle, software is going to allow you to automate your share. He said, then what will I do? I said, then you are free from your store and you can do other things. He said, but I don't have any other thing to do. I said, oh, then you can open another store. He said, no, no, I am done with this store on the matter. I'm not going to open another store.
01:09:08
Speaker
I said, oh, I said, but we are also going to make sure that there is no pilgrimage and there is no Chori and you're feeling at your throat. He said, dude, I said, 12 hours. If anybody is going to try feeding anything, I'll cut their hand. Oh, oh, I said, OK, I don't know. So I said, oh, I said, OK, can you pass on the phone to my fifth guy? And I called him and I said, he's right.
01:09:36
Speaker
We can't replace hell with this offer. The fund is money. Come back. So this is why we were too ahead of our time. There were more reasons for people to technically adopt it.
01:09:52
Speaker
But these kinds of incidents also helped us triangulate our ideal customer profile. So these kinds of incidents, looking for time, made us realize that our ideal customer is the new-aged restaurantier, a fresh restaurantier, a young restaurantier, somebody who is not willing to sit and be a restaurantier.
01:10:17
Speaker
somebody either has other businesses or has plans to open more stores. So we basically qualify it. Like my 2013, within that one year, we had a very solid qualification of who is our ideal customer. And I can tell you, until 2015 or rather I would say 2016, 80% of our business was new from installation.
01:10:44
Speaker
It is only up to 16 that the percentage of replacement, an established restaurant using a legacy system replacing, re-replacing that, it actually accelerated up to 16. I cut through 20-23 today. 95% of our business is replacement. It's not new.
01:11:07
Speaker
In fact, today, tables are in a way, a new restaurant owner, a new restaurant owner is actually quite a close. We don't want to sell it. Because we are a very, very large product. We are not only a learning curve, I think it's like, see, if I, I mean, this sounds very, very powerful, but beer with a brand. It's like, if I put you in a Mercedes on day one,
01:11:38
Speaker
While you will appreciate mercy to you, but you will technically not be able to appreciate it for what it is. I have to put you in a Maruti 800 for an hour. For you to truly appreciate not mercy to your brains. Right? So in our case, a new restaurant here, you know, appreciates it.
01:11:58
Speaker
but can also take a lot of goodness for granted. And we are a very customer-centric company and that is something that you can validate by doing a Google search. So if you will Google search for first review.
01:12:14
Speaker
you will see thousands of reviews, right? Like the number is so high that I can't even fake it. So, and these are the reviews where you will find like, like, you know, people love our support. People love our, you know, assistance. People will talk about that. Oh, nobody has ever duped them. Uh, you know, we have the company who refund money, everything don't go well. Uh, so we have remained customer-friendly at the struck them costs and you know, those struck them costs were really costly.
01:12:44
Speaker
But I think we invested all this faith, believing that there's going to be another day, and we are going to live for long, and this guy is going to turn round and come back, she won't worry, she'll be like, so I think today we realize that people who have actually used something crack, or who have a high fixed problem that is unsolved, have a pain, appreciate us more,
01:13:09
Speaker
as people who don't have pain or don't have a perception of pain right now, can appreciate that, but not exactly for one, you know, be like me really good.
01:13:19
Speaker
Like a lot of SaaS companies start with SME. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct
Perseverance and Branding for Success
01:13:40
Speaker
In 2016, we switched gears, hard switch, and we went enterprise in India, and we started toying with SLB outside of India, and one of the outside of India meant Singapore and Dubai. In 2017, we solidified that machine. What kind of revenue did you have in 2016? Do you need external funding?
01:14:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah, revenue in 2016 was very, very less. I think we closed 2016 March. I hope I'm right. I think we closed as well. How could you afford going abroad?
01:14:28
Speaker
I think we were still profitable. So we, I think we operated company with profits from they were, uh, even at two lakhs. So by the way, we were profitable in two lakhs, 40,000 rupees a month.
01:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, we made 40,000 that month. So our field was always bleak and we maintained it by design. I think both me and Faxi temperament-wise, we cannot any prefer if it's burning. And by that, we invest a lot in the former growth, but not at the right, wrong unit economy.
01:15:06
Speaker
So I think all those principles, you know, nowadays are being talked about a lot because there is a downturn. But although I think that is only for an year after FML funding starts again, people will be like, yeah, grow, grow, grow. So I hear your question. I think what I can tell you is that
01:15:30
Speaker
We started going outside, but we kept on increasing the price of contract. So, so important thing for you to understand is that a product that we sold for 12,000 rupees per year in 2012, we increase the price to 24,000 in 2014.
01:15:47
Speaker
We tried increasing the price in 2015 to $40,000, but that did not work because value creation was not enough. It was our fault. And then when we switched, when I said we switched hard, you know, when we moved to enterprise or rather a chain-first approach, it was definitely not even enterprise. We just said that it chain-first product and we rewrote it and I don't want to come scratch. So we re-architected that.
01:16:13
Speaker
A price from $12,000 and $24,000, click way to 1.2 lakh and 2.4 lakh per restaurant query. So this was a hard ideal customer profile change as well. We stopped talking to small restaurants and I think our definition of small was
01:16:32
Speaker
If the entrepreneur, if the restaurant is thinking small, for example, if you are in a quick service store, like you are in a waffle store chain, right? And you have five stores, negotiating and you don't think about checking. Technically, you're a small guy to me because not because you don't have money or you have a lack of money because your ambition is so small that probably you will find me not only costly, you'll find me difficult.
01:17:01
Speaker
And I agree with him, like we've been pretty, you know, stealth-aware about it. So in 2016, when we switched these gears, the idea was not that we were selling one for $200,000 to the same people who we were selling $12,000 to. No. I think the game was in qualification. So we basically can be hard qualifying. We trained our sales team to walk away faster
01:17:28
Speaker
Then the prospect can walk away from me. You know, I love, I know those calls were no bullshit spam call that I didn't see. And before me, she puts the call. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, this is perfect. You know, she's absolutely mission oriented and she has no focus to give and the whole thing.
01:17:57
Speaker
Right. And I don't appreciate calls when somebody thinks, although sir, I'm from this, good morning seller. Yeah. And do you want, do you want personal? I'm like, why did we go? So we basically trained our sales team, you know, to ask very, very hard questions, to understand the state of the resilience. For example, like I'll give you one definition.
01:18:24
Speaker
For somebody to buy a 1.2 lakh per year sort of product, we were very, very sure that we need to deliver at least a feeling of 12 lakh to somebody. Then only you justify taking 10%. It's a hard one. Now, if you are pitching a 12 lakhs work of saving, you have to actually permit.
01:18:48
Speaker
You can't save 10% for someone, right? That middle zone is not that stupid that you are coming from one side and you will, you know, play can do it, right? So let's be serious about it. Let's be real about it. Let's assume that your product is going to bring in three
01:19:04
Speaker
2.5% efficiency leverage and you need to find those area. Now for that, that means for you to save 12 lakh for someone in a year or a lakh would be in a month. By this definition, that person should be making the sale of at least, you know, making the profit and affair of a margin of at least 20 lakh in a month.
01:19:29
Speaker
or somebody to make a margin of 10 to 20 lakhs in a month, sorry 10 lakhs in a month, or somebody to make a margin of 10 lakhs in a month by burst logic, they have to make a sale of 50 lakhs in a month. That is the burden number. So if your restaurant is doing less than 50 lakhs revenue a month, wrong answer. Right? So our ICPK. Now, when you go to a restaurant bar who's doing a corona month, boom, you are in the game.
01:20:00
Speaker
Our conversion rate has been 85%.
01:20:06
Speaker
Not on the court call, of course. I'm thinking from a qualifier. So once we quantify a prospect, our conversion from qualification to convert was very, very high. So we effectively effectuated that. Because you asked that question, how could you remain profitable? How could you grow outside? I have a very strong belief and this is something that I am not only saying for my own business,
01:20:34
Speaker
You know, I do this, this is my statue. I do this with other entrepreneurs. I do this with my portfolio company, my friends, where I believe that if you're rising, and if you're not wasting your marketing, your sales dollars in chasing or respecting or convincing or working the wrong people,
01:20:58
Speaker
you can be solid, like you can be super profitable, your CAC will always be very, very low, your CAC will return a long term value. So for example, for us, if you are a quantified prospect and we have a hard quantified, honestly, even if you don't buy today, we don't feel bad.
01:21:18
Speaker
because we know that he has left you with such solid information and understanding that you may not be buying today because you're 20,000. You may not have budget. You may not have conviction. You may believe that your business is not ready for it. You may have an idea of the whole, I want to try a cheaper one. I know that in the next three years, you are going to come. So our optimism, if you will talk to an average costless sales person,
01:21:47
Speaker
they will never tell you that there is a lost opportunity. And I'm not just saying it for sale, right? Because each of them have seen so many people coming back that the general operating belief of the company is that there is no lost prospect.
01:22:02
Speaker
It is only delayed. And that allows us to put our best in every conversation we do with the customers. But at the prospecting phase, at the qualification stage, we have improved.
01:22:19
Speaker
Like we will ask you 20,000. And if you at any point, if you're KD and you're Sanji, Oh, no, no. Why should I tell you that on, if you say, I'm curious on, you know, what are you, what do you have to offer? The guy will very politely with high folder. Let's not fix what we have broken. If you have a pay.
01:22:45
Speaker
We can try and figure out if we can try. If you don't have a pain, why are we wasting your time? I can give you a demo, but it won't help you. What does your sales funnel look like? From top of the funnel till conversion? How do you do your lead gen? What channels do you use and so on? Today, our sales, so one thing we have met, 95% of our business is completely in love, including enterprise.
01:23:14
Speaker
So our marketing channels are very educative and brand marketing and long-term marketing channels. So we do a lot of trade show globally, for example, in 20p.
01:23:30
Speaker
2022, we're part of, we're going to have 27 events globally. And these are trade shows, exhibitions, conferences. So in conferences, we sponsor, you know, iSpeaker conferences. In trade shows, we will put like large groups. We will also do auto events. We'll do, you know, small roundtables. You'll do auto mixers.
01:23:57
Speaker
Apart from that, we have our digital client with you on three properties that we learned. So if you will search the restaurant title, or if you will search any question, how to open a cloud kitchen, how to start the restaurant bar, there is a very, very, very, very high time that you will land upon a restaurant by lot.
01:24:17
Speaker
These are all privately written content. We experience 3.5 million unique visitors every year on the blog, completely organic. Our blog, I can share some numbers as well. Our blog and website generate 600 plus qualified hot tea every month and this is zero pack.
01:24:43
Speaker
We don't do paid advertising, just by the way. We don't do paid advertising at all because we don't understand it well or it didn't work out. I don't know. Also because we don't do SMB now, so the reason to do paid advertising is also through the correct formula. So our primary business today is upper mid market margin, our ticket sign.
01:25:09
Speaker
is $100,000 to $1.5 million annual. We still do $10,000 to $100,000 deal, but those are actually not the ones where we will be working hard. It's actually mostly the worst. So for example, there can be a brand which has only two stores right now, but it's only for $200,000 and very, very less a solid company. But today that contract is going to look like $10,000 or $5,000.
01:25:36
Speaker
So we continue doing that, we qualify these very very clearly, then why are you buying them? Because honestly, we do three-year contract. If there's even a little chance that you're not gonna win you next year with us because
01:25:50
Speaker
you are not going to take value out or you are not going to take value out and you found it costly, you will drop in a market this way. I mean, you will say, let's come back once you're ready. This is not the right time. And you will also waste your money by the way. So we are also nice with customers that way because we probably have, we are above
01:26:15
Speaker
that greed may not be greed but I think you want to take everybody's learning but not here. I think for us.
01:26:27
Speaker
Prosperity or any discipline can only be achieved where you have longevity and predictability with your customer, with your revenue, with your cash flow. And that's the only way you can continue building your product. When a customer signs me up for three years and I have a visibility of three years.
01:26:50
Speaker
But now, when a customer makes an art and they find a developer feature for them, are you going to want to be used for like a year? You know, when I come into a mistake, you know, the customer knows that he's finding a portfolio. I mean, they're not going to find me incentive, right? So there is no negative stress in the system that will be leading you next month, be leading you next month.
01:27:16
Speaker
So when you, when you take every kind of negative stress out in the system, then the system operates in a positive shape, right? It's like, I define negative and positive stress out when you are running to win, or when you are running to not lose. And when you are running to not lose, there is a lot of negative pressure built in. Amazing.
01:27:43
Speaker
And sales, international, domestic, all of it is happening from India, like your sales team. No, no, we have people on the ground in different countries. So we have our team right now prevalent in Dubai, Albania, New York, Singapore, Bangkok, Mexico City and US.
01:28:06
Speaker
And so this would not be like inside sale because these are high ticket deals. These are high ticket deals, these are not inside sale. Most of the heaviness, most of the heaviness thing you would see happens from India. Most of the background world happens from India. So my last topic that I want to talk to you is about your angel investor.
Angel Investing Adventures
01:28:30
Speaker
What made you want to be an angel? How do you evaluate people who pitch to you? Tell me a bit about that. I'll go back to probably my early days. I think I always wanted to invest in other people's equity.
01:28:56
Speaker
Even when angel investing was not popular, in fact, I can tell you that it was so difficult to broach the subject that my first angel investment would have actually equated
01:29:11
Speaker
And there was this guy who was also an entrepreneur, you know, in our kind of stage. And we were formulating process to a local level. And this guy will, you know, had started a company like three months before us. And he was still in the early stages. And the guy was absolutely on point. Product was phenomenal.
01:29:32
Speaker
being new that it will go play through. And I remember in December of 11 or January 12, you know, the guy was trying to raise money in the Angel, Indian Angel Network, home by each other in India, and was getting harassed, left rights in turn, with no smoke. People were asking him random shit, giving him crap term sheets. And he, you know, he used to cut in the evening rank about it. We all thought he looked at each other and said, hey, you know, we should invest in this company.
01:30:02
Speaker
And, uh, it occurred to us very naturally. And, and actually, again, as I said, we came in, I mean, Asian investors in India in 2011 was somebody who must be sitting with like a hundred crore cash must be like, uh, you know, like, yeah. So, so Sakhshil, we should invest in this company. You know, we could muster the courage to ask.
01:30:31
Speaker
because he was a fellow entrepreneur and we weren't sure how we looked at it, we didn't accept it, is it going to be nice. And exactly one year from then, I mean, we kept on, we kept in touch, we kept on bouncing off ideas and helping each other. And he made it to YC from India.
01:30:57
Speaker
many early, that's how many today, now 80 million in AR. So who's the founder? This company is called Plivo, P-L-I-V-O, founder of Venki, and Plivo is a Twilio competitor.
01:31:19
Speaker
Okay. You understood that business very well. Correct. I looked for Bell company very, very well. So of course, naturally, it shouldn't be dark. But I think the big guy, so when he was the guy, and we never told him, by the way, we never told him that, I mean, you of course, told him very, very well, but we couldn't mention the quadrants. These were the fields of angel investment where
01:31:46
Speaker
I think, I think thankfully for me and Prachi both implemented very similar about VC. I think our risk appetite is very similar. So I'm like, I think that's great. Otherwise it would have been a little bit of a problem. But I think our belief in entrepreneurs is
01:32:07
Speaker
Uh, like it's too much. I think me we genuinely believe in entrepreneurs. We believe in creators. We don't mind losing money at their hands because we are also pro-lurly And and i'm not saying this in a virtuous sort of way i'm saying this in a very practical way because I have made 48 investment so far and Yeah, and I can tell you that
01:32:36
Speaker
I think, apart from cashier done, I think the amount of knowledge, amount of learning
01:32:44
Speaker
number of journeys that I have gone through with all these friends, all these entrepreneurs, the number of journeys that I keep going through with them, the magnitude, depth, and the width of experience I gain from these 45, 48, and more is worth more than I have invested or they can return.
01:33:09
Speaker
Like, I can speak to you about anything on the Baha'u'llah and so much of that knowledge comes from Cananda here.
01:33:16
Speaker
For example, today in this podcast, you know, you learned a little bit about, you know, this front and back end. A little bit more about why I'm not going to use the software, right? Now imagine if you were talking to me 12 times a year and I'm discussing with you, like my deep dog problems, as you know, you know, my bright now wins. Your perspective about my business will be as much like you'll be
01:33:43
Speaker
Like, you'd be looking at a restaurant and you'd be feeling like, you know, sending a software to you, right? Because you are not interested in that. So pricing, and for us, that journey was important. When we were saying that, oh, let's invest in pre-work, I think Neel is actually not really thinking that, oh, he will go to YT, and he'll make a lot of money. I think we were, like, it was just a romanticism, like, the basic romanticism, fundamental stuff. We love talking to him, he loves talking to us, this is high energy to offer.
01:34:12
Speaker
Let's be a model. Let's buy a small ticket away. So I think that happened. We did not really think a lot about it. But when he went to ITN, people started flying. It got validated. You're okay. But I think our first engine investment really happened in 2016.
01:34:35
Speaker
Well, another company, a friend, you know, who we were helping in general, Robono, bouncing ideas and all, he needed, you know, 10 lakhs a piece. And he was, like, in the middle of his beat set. And I know that's funny. And I, of course, believed in him. And the project for which he was then lagged was also spicy.
01:35:04
Speaker
and then next starts. And I actually told him and he was worried that what if he doesn't make it to YC. So I told him, I said, don't worry. This 10 lakh is not a real burden. It is also not a long repeat. Take the 10 lakh, go to YC, go to textiles. If you go through, break. If you don't, keep this money. Whenever you raise your next round, whatever that valuation is, convert this into equity and I'm fine with it.
01:35:34
Speaker
So these guys could not clear what I think. I think they did take stock, I don't remember now. But that company went on to do good stuff, eventually got acquired. And that kind of became the start of that journey. And since then, it has only reached over time. But one of the major reasons in 2016 for this to happen
01:36:01
Speaker
actually a personal fight event. We got a massive application model and money was good for our state and that type. Money was also good at an individual level. Amazing. What are some of those accounting brands that use process in India?
01:36:23
Speaker
They didn't have a lot of them. India, so right from your Sanjeev Kapoor restaurant, you know Chilli, you know Mirji, you know you see this, Dabha has chain of restaurants called Panjavu, Tresco, Dhammar, you have all these iconic locations, I mean people and all iconic locations like
01:36:55
Speaker
than QSRs like Belgian Waffle, Wow Moon World, North of Homegrown Chair, you know, in every country. Very international brand, you can find most of the cars, juniors, Taco Bell, Subway, so all 700 sub-bills in a day user. You'll also find a thing, you know,
01:37:17
Speaker
top finite restaurants, you find a certain, you know, large restaurant bars. So I can, I can name them for each city, each city has its own, you know, ecosystem. But, but if it's a large restaurant bar, if it's a place which has, you know, for example, Sunboy is a popular brand name, you know, in Goa, in Hyderabad, you know, they are a constitutional
01:37:41
Speaker
and actually a lot of iconic, you know, those small locations like, you know, for example, North Delhi, North Delhi and Murtul, right? So, on highway, yeah, wow. On Murtul, Ahuja number one, which is like a 67-year-old now, but there you was. North India has these beautiful Haveli on highway. So, Haveli is a customer.
01:38:09
Speaker
Uh, and I can, I mean, I can keep on thinking like in Bangalore, you have, you have magnolia, big B from New York. You have our, our building company, uh, and so you find us all at all these pictures.
01:38:25
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. 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.