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  • Step into the intersection of technology and marketing with the latest episode of the Marketing Nation SaaS podcast. Hosted by Arvind Parthiban, the Co-Founder & CEO of SuperOps.ai, this episode welcomes Ramesh Ravishankar, Co-Founder and CGO of Highperformer.ai, whose previous stints at Freshworks and Google have armed him with unparalleled insights into the digital marketing world.

    This conversation delves into the evolving landscape where AI meets content creation, debunking myths about AI's role in the future of marketing jobs by highlighting its potential to enhance human creativity and efficiency. Ramesh shares his journey with Highperformer.ai, offering a unique perspective on leveraging AI to build a robust social presence and the strategic importance of identifying your Total Addressable Market (TAM) early on.

    Get a glimpse into product-led growth strategies that attract leads organically, and the critical decision-making between inbound and outbound marketing based on the stage of your company and the current market demands. The episode draws inspiration from Freshworks' success, showcasing how optimizing AdWords strategy and managing lead quality can scale a business from serving SMBs to mid-market enterprises.

    Join us for this engaging and insightful session, designed for both budding entrepreneurs and seasoned marketers looking to navigate today's dynamic digital landscape with confidence and creativity.

    Key Takeaways:

    1:13 - Content Marketing Revolution: AI's Role

    3:40 - Ramesh's Journey: Freshworks to Google

    5:33 - Highperformer.ai: A Strategic Odyssey

    8:49 - Startup Success: Unlocking TAM

    13:11 - Growth Hacking with Free Tools

    21:07 - Scaling Up: From SMB to Worldwide

    23:58 - Lead Quality: Marketing vs. Sales Dynamics

    28:10 - The Lead Conversion Debate

    29:51 - The Inbound Marketing Roadmap: Strategic Insights

    32:06 - Advanced Tactics in Lead Generation

    40:39 - GenAI: Transforming Marketing Workflows

    43:55 - SEO Evolution: The AI Content Impact

    Key Mentions:

    ChatGPT

    Freshworks

    Google

    AdWords

    LinkedIn

    Salesforce

    Sora.ai

  • Welcome to another episode of Founder’s Deep Dive! Join our guest, Sachin Bhatia, and our host, Suresh Sambandam, as they delve into several topics, including the formula for happiness, expanding into a global market, and all the challenges and wins that come along the way. It’s a very intellectual conversation where they talk about very abstract and high-level concepts using anecdotes from their own lives. Enjoy the episode!

    Key Takeaways

    02:00 - Meet the Players!

    03:24 - Success vs Happiness

    06:50 - Are You an Architect or a Contractor?

    10:00 - Early 2000s - A Changing India

    12:05 - Moving from BPO to Enterprise Segment

    17:30 - Ameyo’s First Enterprise Customer

    19:55 - Inside Sales and Sales Development

    22:20 - Can SMB SaaS Survive?

    24:19 - Global Emerging Markets

    27:07 - Different Countries and their Ticket Sizes

    31:30 - Doing Business in Dubai

    35:35 - Team Distribution for International Markets

    37:26 - Relationship Building in Emerging Markets

    40:20 - Generating Pipelines for Enterprises

    45:58 - Ameyo’s Secret Sauce

    51:28 - Successful Marketing Strategies

    56:18 - Final Words of Wisdom Key Mentions

    02:59 - OrangeScape (KissFlow)

    05:30 - Freshworks

    05:40 - Drishti (Ameyo)

    06:35 - HP, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, IBM

    06:30 - Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL

    11:45 - ZOHO

    14:45 - Helion

    14:49 - Daksh

    15:44 - Ameyo

    15:59 - Peppertap

    15:59 - Meru

    16:00 - UrbanCompany

    16:38 - Ola

    17:40 - Motilal Oswal

    19:36 - HubSpot


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  • Welcome to another episode of Deep Dive! Suresh, our host, and Aditya Tulsian, our guest, delve into the critical role of ICPs and how organizations deal with acquisition journeys.

    Aditya is a seasoned entrepreneur who founded Numberz, which was acquired by Chargebee, prior to which he held a very important role at Intuit. After an MBA at ISB Hyderabad, launching QuickBooks in India was the experience that revealed a universal truth to him: businesses worry about cash flow, not accounting. In 2016, inspired by these insights, Aditya co-founded Numberz, initially for Indian small businesses, later expanding globally. The company recently got acquired by Chargebee, uniting visionary forces.

    In the world of startups, understanding the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is like holding the compass that guides the business. The success, failure, or struggles of any company can be traced back to the clarity or confusion they have about the ICP. Aditya and Suresh nail down what it takes to find your perfect ICP, and the struggles and pressures of navigating an acquisition conversation with both the buyer and the team.

    Key Takeaways:

    00:00 - Meet Aditya Tulsian!

    07:00 - Finding the perfect ICP - Problem first or person first?

    08:13 - Mr. Cook’s billionaire’s business blueprint

    09:15 - When Suresh narrowly missed meeting Mr. Cook

    11:13 - Nuances of B2B and B2C with ICP

    15:15 - Narrowing down customer segments to ICP

    17:54 - Your ICP is actually a combination of 3 people

    19:09 - How BYJU’S missed the ICP

    21:50 - Tally vs Intuit

    22:37 - Numberz’s journey with ICP

    27:42 - The buyer, user and influencer of Numberz

    30:20 - Repercussions of a vague ICP

    32:00 - The fundamental difference between Box and Dropbox

    33:46 - Product team’s role in finding the ICP

    35:00 - The impact of the right ICP on marketing

    38:53 - A leader’s job in the organization

    39:45 - Critical points to keep in mind during an acquisition

    44:16 - Handling uncertainties like a pro during acquisitions

    48:44 - Managing your team’s concerns around an acquisition

    52:45 - Closing thoughts

    Key Mentions

    01:37 - Numberz

    01:40 - ChargeBee

    03:18 - Intuit

    03:47 - QuickBooks

    10:36 - KissFlow

    12:52 - Facebook

    19:10 - BYJU’S

    21:50 - Tally

    32:01 - Box

    32:03 - Dropbox

    41:43 - Freshworks

  • Enjoy this 50-minute podcast where Arvind and Varun get on a call with Ankit Oberoi to decode the dilemma of ABM, or Account Based Marketing. Ankit, being a proponent for documentation and structure, talks about his journey with AdPushup and how they discovered the untapped potential of ABM in a world filled with inbound marketing companies. Having cracked the ABM playbook methodically, Ankit shares some gems of wisdom with Arvind and Varun as the three of them nail down the specifics of what ABM is and how to leverage it to engage prospective clients in ways that really matter.

    Key Takeaways

    01:45 - Meet Ankit Oberoi!

    03:50 - The Power of ABM

    05:52 - Ankit’s tryst with ABM

    08:42 - Big companies are intimidating!

    11:38 - Identifying the right ICP for you

    14:49 - Pick an ICP for your roadmap or pick a roadmap for your ICP?

    18:38 - Outbound vs ABM

    21:06 - Structuring the Organization for ABM

    25:12 - SuperOps’ journey with ABM

    27:28 - Using a RevOps team

    33:48 - Building the ABM machine

    35:35 - Database Management at AdPushup

    39:45 - AdPushup’s channels beyond ABM

    45:48 - Planning for Zelto’s acquisition

    Key Mentions

    01:16 - Zelto

    02:04 - AdPushup

    03:39 - SGx

    08:41 - Kayako

    39:05 - Almabase

    41:32 - Microsoft Azure

    41:42 - Google

    44:05 - Facebook

    Happy watching and listening! 🎧

  • “Never change your SEO team while shifting from SMB to enterprise, because once lost, never regained.” Join Maansi Sanghi and Arvind for more such knowledge bombs as they deep-dive into the world of product marketing.

    Maansi takes us through her journey of product marketing, and how the team at iMocha braved the tumultuous shift from an SMB model to an enterprise model of marketing. You’ll also find a lot of tips and tricks on how to refine and hone your processes and your pipelines inside your organization.

    Tune in with Maansi and Arvind as they break down and examine the bare bones of a business and the best practices for marketing teams.

    Key Takeaways

    02:25 – Forming strong teams

    04:50 – Indispensable players in a marketing team

    05:10 – iMocha’s team structure

    05:45 – The dichotomy of inbound and content teams

    08:25 – From SMB to Enterprise

    11:40 – Your demand generation engine

    13:19 – Do you have a channel problem or a marketing problem?

    16:12 – Enterprise marketing tenets

    18:12 – iMocha’s training protocols

    22:27 – Setting OKRs for your team

    30:52 – How deep is your sale?

    33:40 – Positioning yourself in events

    43:11 – Making an impression on your customer

    46:29 – Rapid Fire!

    Key Mentions

    iMocha - 05:09

    FreshWorks - 08:15

    HubSpot - 27:11

    MS Excel - 27:14

    Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount

    - 51:08

  • For the next 45 minutes, join our guest Anand Venkatraman as he and Arvind dive deep into the murky waters of partner channel marketing. It's a power packed episode filled with gems of knowledge and wisdom that could substitute for an MBA lecture.

    Anand introduces the world of partner channels (yes, it's non-MBA friendly), and then goes into the nitty gritties of how to cultivate that side of the business, the best practices while working with partners and the most common mistakes you're better off avoiding when it's your turn.

    Tune in and listen to Anand and Arvind dissect some really abstract concepts with crystal clear insights—on the very first episode of Marketing Nation!

    Key Takeaways

    00:00 - Intro

    03:25 - Partner Channels 101

    04:20 - The Revenue Partners

    08:04 - The Technology Partners

    09:58 - Owning the partner channels

    15:00 - A small start-up’s cheat sheet for partner acquisition

    20:40 - Vetting a partner’s account books

    22:19 - SuperOps’s journey with partner channels

    23:20 - Feeding the partner engine

    27:30 - Common mistakes to avoid

    32:25 - On the importance of PRM

    33:57 - Taking MDF more seriously

    35:33 - A shifting market - On-prem to SaaS

    44:05 - Anand’s message to founders

    Key Mentions

    00:38 - Salesforce

    00:40 - Akamai

    00:42, 38:41 - FreshWorks

    00:47 - CleverTap

    01:00 - Growthloop.ai

    06:49 - TCS, Accenture, HCL

    08:41 - Line Messenger

    08:48 - KakaoTalk

    09:20 - Amazon, Google, Microsoft

    22:20 - SuperOps

    22:43 - Connectwise

    22:43 - Kaseya

  • This episode is special because its the first time we are having a founder from Singapore join the SaaSBoomi Podcast!

    Suresh Sambandam, CEO of KissFlow has a virtual sit down with none other than Sagar Khatri, the founder of Multiplier, a Sequoia surge backed SaaS business that helps business hire talent globally. We dive deep to talk about Sagar’s motivations to start Multiplier, how AI disrupts his offering and his dream of running a public company.

    Key Takeaways

    00:19 - Multiplier and Sagar’s intro

    01:50 - Multiplier's value prop and its benefits

    16:15 - Sagar's story behind starting Multiplier and why it's a SaaS business

    21:14 - Sagar's vision for making payroll an employee-driven phenomenon

    26:02 - How Multiplier deals with legalities and potential challenges in their business model

    36:48 - Importance of having a strong product background for Platform dev

    39:27 - How AI influences Sagar's business

    46:10 - Role of governments in employment and the gig economy's effect on social contributions

    53:15 - Sagar's go-to-market strategy and their sales cycle for inbound and outbound leads

    56:09 - Sagar's thoughts on "The Ride of a Lifetime" by Bob Iger

    57:10 - What Sagar envisions for the future of Multiplier and his dream of running a public company

    Key MentionsAmazon: Sagar mentioned employment use cases with companies like Amazon and Orange.Orange: Sagar mentioned employment use cases with companies like Amazon and Orange.Sequoia: Sequoia has been an investor in Sagar's previous startup and was indirectly involved in his experiences that led to the founding of Multiplier.GCP: Sagar talked about the shift from having server rooms to using cloud solutions like GCP.Azure: Sagar discussed the shift from having server rooms to using solutions like Azure.Kissflow: A platform that Sagar mentioned his company Multiplier uses for their backend.ADP: ADP was mentioned as a traditional payroll processing company that Multiplier aims to outpace with its more modern, employee-driven approach.Tiger Global Management: Tiger Global Management is an investor in Multiplier for their Series B round.DST Global: DST Global is an investor in Multiplier for their Series B round.Pine Labs: Pine Labs is another investor in Multiplier.IIT Bombay: The co-founders of Multiplier are both alumni of IIT Bombay.Kelly Services: Kelly Services was mentioned as a traditional staffing services firm similar to what Multiplier aims to disrupt with their platform.Talent Wiki: Sagar mentioned that they have created a Talent Wiki of 150 countries to help customers with labor law information.Ranstad: Ranstad was mentioned as a traditional staffing services firm similar to what Multiplier aims to disrupt with their platform.Robert Walters: Robert Walters is a recruitment agency where Am Paul Sing, Co-founder of Multiplier, previously worked.Lazada: Lazada is an e-commerce company in Southeast Asia where Multiplier’s CTO previously worked as SVP of Engineering.Freshworks: Sagar compared his company's go-to-market model with that of Freshworks.MTR: A restaurant in India that Sagar loves, mentioned while discussing a meeting in Chennai with Suresh.Sangeetha Restaurants: A restaurant in Chennai that Suresh suggested Sagar visit when he comes to the city.

    Multiplier is a platform that allows companies to hire talent globally without the need to set up legal entities in each country. With coverage in 150 countries, Multiplier handles all aspects of employment such as contracts, payroll, benefits, taxes, and social contributions, allowing companies to focus on sourcing the right talent. Although Multiplier itself does not do recruitment, it provides the infrastructure necessary for a company to hire globally.

    The employee is technically on Multiplier's payroll since the legal entity belongs to Multiplier. What seems to matter more is the work relationship and the emotional connection that employees have with their team and their work, not the legal specifics.

  • Suresh Sambandam, CEO of KissFlow has a virtual sit down with not one but two co-founders, who also happen to be a married couple. Besides finding out about how they set out on founding their respective companies, Suresh also explores their unique working dynamics and relationship, the ups and downs of doing business together, the pros and cons of operating out of a Tier 2 city and of course their secrets to building a successful business model with CallHippo and SoftwareSuggest. Enjoy this first of its kind episode!

    Key Takeaways

    5:13 - CallHippo business model

    7:10 - Inception of CallHippo, founder story and current revenues

    11:18 - Global customer segments

    12:44 - Impact of inbound marketing, how to manage your budget for Inbound Marketing

    15:05 - SEO strategy

    19:15 - Exercising patience to see SEO results

    21:57 - Optimizing for humans not Google

    26:20 - Traffic to sign up rate

    32:23 - Tactical hacks for increasing sign up conversion and churn rates

    34:59 - Marketing to Sales funnel - Handling different ticket size customer segments

    41:48 - Hiring strategy in a Tier 2 city

    45:24 - Pros and Cons of operating out of a Tier 2 city

    50:33 - Spouses to Co-Founders

    53:52 - Developing the culture at CallHippo

    1:01:32 - Vision for CallHippo

    Key Mentions

    3:36 Software Suggest

    3:43 CallHippo

    3:57 Exotel

    8:08 Avinash Raghava

    8:30 Girish Mathrubootham

    10:55 Ozonetel

    18:09 RingCentral

    21:05 Google

    32:05 Mail Chimp

    35:48 HubSpot

  • In Part 2 of Getting SaaS Pricing right, Arvind and Varun bump it up a notch. They discuss key features of a pricing plan like Naming of plans, the ideal number of plans to go with, Add-ons, Discounts, cost-based pricing and value-based pricing.

    Listen on as the duo share insights from their own experience of having worked for and mentored other companies and of course getting the price right in their own respective startups. Enjoy the show!

    Key Takeaways

    3:40 - Decoy pricing plan

    6:05 - What's the ideal number of price plans?

    8:30 - Open Vs Hidden pricing

    14:00 - Contact us to know the pricing

    16:56 - Knowing your target audience while selling

    21:40 - Naming the Price Plans

    26:10 - Deciding on the value metric

    28:05 - Land and expand strategy

    29:55 - What is value and value-based pricing?

    35:43 - Is there room for Add-ons?

    42:12 - How often do we change pricing?

    44:23 - Open Vs Closed pricing verdict

    46:05 - Dishing out Discounts

    49:15 - Importance of pricing in NRR

    52:00 - Top 3 ways to increase NRR

    56:15 - Importance of revenue recognition

    59:15 - Varun and Arvind’s Pricing pet peeves

    Key mentions

    Apple

    SuperOps

    Girish M

    Zoho

    FreshDesk

    PipeCandy

    Wingman

    Intercom

    Spot Instances

    Spot.io

    ChargeBee

    Manage Engine

    Hubspot

    IKEA

    Sequoia

    For Entrepreneurs

  • In this episode of the BTS podcast, our hosts Arvind and Varun introduce a new format of discussion to the show and decide to pick each other's brains to go deeper into topics that are pertinent to founders and marketeers.

    They explore the various aspects of designing the perfect pricing plan for your business keeping in mind various aspects such as the product, the perceived value, the market segment, the industry and the buyer persona.

    Listen on as they explore pricing strategies of various companies who’ve done it right from the get-go and others who’ve got it right through trial and error, in effect showcasing how setting a pricing plan for your SaaS product may not always be the simplest or most straightforward exercise.

    Key Takeaways/Timestamps

    2:37 - MSP - Managed Service Provider

    3:10 - Silent price hikes in the industry

    5:33 - 4 levers of business

    7:32 - Effective communication over Grandfathering

    10:02 - Pricing game on point

    11:09 - HubSpot-on pricing

    14:03 - Unpredictable pricing design

    16:17 - Don’t reinvent the pricing wheel that works

    20:28 - Questions to ask before designing the pricing model

    21:41 - Who’s doing the heavy lifting?

    22:32 - Top 3 challenges faced by Indian Saas companies

    24:54 - Perceived value of your product

    28:55 - Are you selling based on the features of your product?

    32:52 - Playing to the persona

    36:45 - Common pricing mistakes in the Indian ecosystem

    Key Mentions

    3:30 - Ninjaone

    7:37 - Netflix

    11:44 - Intercom

    12:04 - Hubspot

    12:11 - Salesforce

    12:13 - Pipedrive

    17:10 - Girish Mathrubootham

    38:02 - Pipecandy

    38:19 - Wingman

  • In this episode of the Founder’s Deep Dive Podcast, Suresh Sambandham CEO and Founder of KissFlow has a one on one with Prabhu Rangarajan, Co-founder of M2P Fintech.

    M2P is an API infrastructure giant delivering futuristic and customer-centric fintech solutions through cutting-edge technology with a wide range of solutions across Payments, Lending, and Banking.

    Suresh and Prabhu get into the juicy details of how M2P was founded and how they grew from a 60 member company pre-pandemic to a 1200 member company now. Prabhu also shares his journey of founding M2P along with his co-founders Madhu and Muthu and now acquiring 8 other companies and in effect running M2P with 20 co-founders who became the founding team.

    Listen on to hear more about the exciting success story of M2P!

    Key Takeaways

    2:46 - Inception of M2P

    6:50 - Tatkal: Inventing on-tap money

    8:21 - M2P customer base

    11:18 - How does M2P charge its customers

    12:30 - Story behind the name M2P

    14:30 - Bringing the founders together

    20:30 - Do too many cooks spoil the broth?

    27:30 - Role playing between Founders

    29:28 - M2Ps Multi-city presence

    30:24 - Numbers Pre and Post Covid

    34:44 - Funding, Acquisitions & Expansion

    40:53 - Acquisitions left, right and center

    43:11 - Carving a niche with no competition

    44:56 - Cultural integration of multiple companies into M2P

    54:40 - Building a company for the next 100 years

    Key Mentions

    4:35 - IIFL Finance

    4:38 - DCB Bank

    9:23 - Slice

    16:25 - Madhusudanan

    16:39 - Muthukumar

    16:43 - Visa

    36:33 - Paytm

    38:44 - Amrish Rau

    38:45 - Kunal Shah

    39:01 - 39:05

    Tiger Global

    Insight Partners

    Mitsubishi UFJ Group of Japan

    41:11 - FinFlux

    47:33 - Sujay Vasudevan

  • ExtraaEdge is an early start-up founded in 2016, currently powering 350+ Educational Institutes with the cloud computing solution. Founded by Abhishek Ballabh (ex. HSBC Data Scientist) & Sushil Mundada (ex. HSBC - Lead BA & CRM Architect) ExtraaEdge delivers all the required tools for End-to-End automation of admissions processes. With their combined passion for education and knowledge expertise in Data and CRM, they contribute by developing ExtraaEdge.

    In this episode, Varun and Arvind explore Abhishek Ballabh’s journey of founding ExtraaEdge and his experience of SaaSBOOMi’s SGx program. Abhishek shares various marketing insights and anecdotes about his journey so far and how his new found “yoda-mindset” has taken him and his company from a primarily hustle-driven outbound sales company to now being predominantly inbound marketing-driven organization.

    Listen on as this trio share some great insights and banter.

    Key Take aways

    0:41 Welcome and Introduction to Abhishek Ballabh & ExtraaEdge

    2:59 CAGR Banter

    4:03 Marketing Org Chart

    7:17 Desi Perception of Marketing & Sales

    8:41 Coupling the effects of SGx and Covid

    10:18 Lessons learnt in SGx put to practice

    11:43 SGx - Growth Vipassana for entrepreneurs

    12:44 Who reports to Marketing?

    19:58 Founder Branding

    21:20 Channeling one’s Yoda-mindset

    22:49 Being the face of the brand

    26:55 ExtraaEdge’s transformation Pre and Post SGx

    30:41 Apple’s DRI concept

    31:56 Transformation from Outbound Hustle to Inbound Marathon

    36:28 First International client through ABM

    41:57 Maximizing MarTech through ExtraaEdge Certification Academy

    48:46 Being synonymous with your industry

    49:47 Stacking Marketing Dominoes across the prospects journey

    52:10 The push and pull of Marketing & Sales

    53:39 Founder being a student of Marketing & Conclusion

    Key Mentions

    1:48 HSBC

    2:09 Mindtickle

    4:41 Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham, Y Combinator

    6:30 Sushil Mundada

    6:43 SaaSBOOMi Growth X program

    8:25 Sachin Bhatia

    20:20 Niti Ratnaparkhi

    20:58 Yoda (Star Wars)

    30:16 Apple

    30:18 Steve Jobs

    36:52 Ankit Oberoi & Ad Pushup

    37:20 Bits Pilani Dubai

    39:35 Nikhil Sutar

    43:46 Career Guide

    48:01 Robert Cialdini

    48:47 Almabase

    Happy watching!
  • In this Episode, our hosts Varun and Arvind have a virtual sit down with Naveen Goyal, CEO and Founder of NoPaperForms. 

    NoPaperForms is the India’s largest and most advanced SaaS based Enrolment Automation Platform enabling educational institutions to unlock their potential i.e. Attract, Engage, and Grow their Enrolments. Serving 1000+ customers, NoPaperForms, today, is the de facto choice for anyone in education, looking to grow - be it Preschool to K-12, Higher Education to Online Degrees, Coaching & Training Institutes to EdTech. 

    Varun and Arvind explore Naveen’s journey of founding NoPaperForms and his insights on the way he’s structured his marketing org, unifying sub-functions, de-positioning the CRM viewpoint and addressing the problem statement head on. Naveen also shares why and how he went about commencing the 100 day challenge across the firm.   

    Listen on as this trio share some valuable insights and learn from each others experiences.  

    Key Takeaways

    1:18 Welcome and Introduction to NoPaperForms

    3:23 NoPaperForms Marketing Org Chart 

    7:54 Aligning Product, Marketing & Sales

    9:06 One-man marketing magician? 

    11:53 100 people in 100 days challenge

    18:06 De-positioning the CRM and addressing the problem statement

    20:34 Positioning the enrolment process

    24:08 Unification of the product

    26:49 Introducing the enrolment cloud to the market

    30:14 Brand Identity and positioning

    34:20 Newspaper campaign through Covid

    39:27 NoPaperForms uses Paper

    46:25 Psychology, brand retention & conversion

    49:10 Rapid fire round

    54:19 Conclusion

     

    Key Mentions

    15:20 Suraj Sapra - Co-founder, NoPaperForms

    21:21 SRM University, Vellore Institute of Technology

    30:52 Apple

    31:07 Volvo, Tesla

    31:15 Mercedes, BMW

    32:47 Leadsquared

    32:55 Extraaedge

    33:40 Girish M - Founder & CEO, Freshworks

    40:03 Ashish Tulsian - Co-founder & CEO, Posist

  • Kalyan Varma is the Co-Founder & CEO of Almabase. Before solving the alumni fundraising problem, Kalyan worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, just as he moved to start an online marketplace which couldn’t scale, yet he kept trying new things to eventually stumble upon the gap in the education system to eventually start Almabase.

    Kalyan is an alumnus of NIT Warangal and cites BITS Pilani as the foremost institution in the country with the strongest alumni relations.

    In this episode, as we dug deeper into the idea in this unconventional space, Kalyan breaks down the idea by sharing memorable experiences from some of the big institutions around the world; the challenges he faced in US trying to learn more about the disorganized space, in a bid to fix the broken relationship between the alumni and the colleges to create a win-win situation for both around the world.

    Tune in to watch an insightful conversation brew among the trio.

    Key take aways

    2:14 - A creative way of solving high college tuition fees

    5:15 - Building blocks of a strong marketing structure

    10:55 - How can sales empower marketing?

    14:11 - Thought leadership marketing and category creation

    17:27 - Getting the first US customers

    18:34 - Cold emailing and customer development hack

    21:30 - Going all out to understand your Customers

    25:10 - Why now is a good time to sell to US?

    27:20 - Customer agony to features

    28:47 - The Power of a rock-solid CRM

    30:38 - How CRM is set up differently for better?

    33:30 - The CRM mantra that helped us

    37:01 - 5x scale from ABM compared to Outbound

    38:25 - The Win-Win-Win Strategy

    39:44 - Partnering with a billion dollar company as a startup

    44:31 - Disengagement of Alumni

    48:12 - Starting up in 2023: What will you do differently?

    49:33 - Kalyan’s biggest pet peeve

    Happy listening!🎧

  • Saravana Kumar, the founder of Kovai.co is a techie, a marketer who was ahead of the curve, a and maverick salesperson.Even during his early career, he has done the unthinkable of switching from a product company like Microsoft to consulting company like Accenture.

    While at Accenture, he continued working with Microsoft products, he spotted gaps that left enterprise clients in the lurch. The techie and entrepreneur in Saravana Kumar built a product to address the challenge and managed to sell it to an enterprise market successfully. All this while working part-time for Fidelity International and moonlighting on his idea during 2 weekdays and the weekend.

    During the initial days of Kovai.co, Saravana Kumar was able to win 30 enterprise clients clocking in $300k in revenues. Saravana Kumar also had the sales and marketing acumen that made him run content marketing when the term itself was known only to a handful.

    He built an audience for his idea by writing 600+ articles about the Microsoft BizTalk server which created the initial buzz and demand for the product even before it its launch. This also led to Microsoft recognizing him as the ‘Most Valuable Professional’ in BizTalk Server, a credential he has held for the past 15 years.

    To further build the sales pipeline, he also attended user group events across Europe and succeeded at winning at least 10 leads from every event.

    As a SaaS brand’s leader, Saravana Kumar is also adept at doling out deals that others cannot refuse. A skill that came in handy in building a leadership team consisting of ex-Microsoft employees among many others.

    Tune into our latest episode where Saravana retraces Kovai.co’s journey from being a one-person company to a multi-product SaaS company that is now 250+ people strong.

    Key take aways:

    02:13 - Introduction/Who is Saravana Kumar?

    03:18 - The birth of BizTalk360, the first product

    04:09 - From London to Kovai (Coimbatore)

    04:52 - I see. I solve. I sell.

    07:04 - Leaving Microsoft for a red carpet welcome at Accenture

    16.56 - Building an audience before the product

    19:23 -Nuances of pricing a SaaS product

    24:56 - The two ingredients that helped couture the enterprise market (blog and events)

    29:03 - Tracing the growth journey from $100k to $8 Million

    34:42 -Giving a Microsoft guy a deal he could not refuse

    36:06 - A Founder's Mindset ingrained since childhood

    41:47 - Coping with the challenges of a multi-product strategy

    47:34 - The biggest cost in building a software company

    49:19 - Acquisitions to fuel business growth

    52:46 - Building leadership talent from past network

    58:45 - The Culture DNA of Kovai.co

    1:02:03 - Kovai.co - The story behind the name

    1:02:34 - Kovai Connect - A program to nurture young talent

    01:03:08 - The next 5-10 years for Kovai

    Key mentions

    16:42 - Sarvana Kumar wins recognition for exceptional community leadership - The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Walking buddy becomes the new COO for Kovai.co - SaaS firm Kovai.co appoints Andrew Cloke as new COO1:07:10 Saravana Kumar featured on the cover of the Latka SaaS magazineMicrosoftIIT Madras Stanford University AccentureNational Health Service Fidelity International Biztalk360Serverless360 Andrew Cloke
  • Pranay is a SaaS investor at Matrix Partners India. Before moving to investing, Pranay played several key roles at Freshworks including the Director of Growth Marketing at Freshworks, and managed to ramp up the marketing machinery.

    He has also worked with the CEO’s office at Freshworks where he was responsible for ramping the revenues from 5 Million to 100 Million.

    He comes with tons of knowledge on how marketing used to work in the past, how it works today, and how SaaS businesses should think about marketing for the future.

    Pranay recommends SaaS businesses find new channels where their target audience hangs out as early as possible. There is no single marketing strategy or channel that will always work. It is necessary for businesses to find their “distribution edge”.

    The BTS Podcast Episode 10 has Pranay sharing several nuggets of marketing wisdom.

    Tune in to watch the full podcast.

    Key takeaways:

    1:24 - Building a SaaS company: Then and Now

    3:46 - The challenges that businesses face today

    4:35 - Optimizing costs for lead-gen

    7:56 - Worthy SaaS examples

    9:15 - Lessons learnt from experiments

    13:45 - Winning the confidence of enterprise customers

    19:19 - The Experience Roadshow

    26:34 - How to measure the RoI of non-standard events

    28:03 - Indicators of Product Market Fit and Business Market Fit

    33:05 - Founders should become students of sales

    34:35 - Indian SaaS advantage

    39:41 - Rapid fire

    Resources mentioned2:34 - How Wiz reached $100M ARR in 18 months? Techcrunch8:02 - Rocketlane’s Community Building | The CMO Journal29:55 - Girish Mathrubootam’s first blog announcing Freshdesk as a startup in October 2010 while Freshdesk was publicly launched in June 20114 interesting campaigns discussed throughout the podcastThe van that traveled to 11 destinations | Freshworks Experience Roadshow | 2019Going on air to create virality - #Failsforce campaignReports instill confidence in buyers - Freshdesk | Forrester TEI ReportRocketlane’s rap song announcing fundraisingKey mentions8:00 - Srikrishnan Ganesan of RocketLane

    2. 33:00 - Rishi Kulkarni and Sameer Goel of Revv

  • Dhruvil Sanghvi is a tech-savvy engineer who began his career as a consultant before taking up the entrepreneurial journey in 2015. Today, he also invests in startups. Coming from a multi-generational business family, Dhruvil believes that launching and running a successful business is the best way to create a big impact on society and economy. His journey of kickstarting LogiNext with his own savings, raising 10 Million dollars in funding within a short span of 9 months after the seed round definitely has lessons for every SaaS founder.

    LogiNext is a global technology and automation company with a focus on the transportation, home deliveries, omni-channel fulfillment, and B2B distribution market.

    Founded in 2015, LogiNext can be rightly called one of the early entrants into the Indian SaaS space. LogiNext entered the market during a period when Amazon and several other startups were setting up the rapidly growing startup scene.

    This episode will unravel the growth journey of LogiNext and how it went on to global brands like McDonald’s, Mahindra, PayTM, Myntra, Decathlon & Domino’s among many others as its clients. As a bonus, Dhruvil will also share the lessons he learned from the mistakes he made as a founder and how LogiNext managed to bounce back from them. The lessons helped them scale 150 clients across SEA, the Middle East, India, the US, Europe, and Latin America.

    Key takeaways

    1:35 - What is LogiNext

    2:45 - Dhruvil’s Background

    9:30 - How consulting experience helped in SaaS?

    13:38 - Advantages of coming from a business family

    21:27 - Raising funds as a new entrepreneur

    23:20 - How did he spend the first $100k on the company?

    28:26 - What did it take to raise the first $500k?

    30:05 - Going from $500k to $10 Million in funding within 9 months

    42:32 - GTM Plan and Ideal ICPs

    46:28 - Acquisition Model

    47:06 - Marketing and Sales Spend

    49:07 - Becoming an investor

    52:29 - SaaS Founders that Dhruvil looks up to

    53:48 - 3 exciting startup investments Dhruvil has made

    54:09 - Thoughts on work-life balance

    55:23 - Advice for upcoming SaaS Entrepreneurs

    Key mentions

    Microsoft Venture

    Reliance GenNext

    Indian Angel Network

    Vijay Shekhar Sharma : Twitter | LinkedIn

    Sanjay Mehta : Twitter | LinkedIn

    Happy Listening! 🎧

  • From Pigeons, to Food to User Retention - A journey of tinkering, grit and innovation.

    Anand Jain is a serial entrepreneur, who started his entrepreneurial journey as a 16 year old in college by fixing computers and selling softwares to lawyers. In this episode he talks about his upbringing, early ventures, and his current startup CleverTap.

    CleverTap is a user retention platform that helps companies retain users for life, with clients like Jio, Times Group, Swiggy, PayTM, and Dream 11.

    Patented Database Technology

    50 petabytes of data currently stored by CleverTap

    DIY approach in his early college years, learning to repair electrical and electronic appliances in his neighbourhood. Bicycling to the ISRO’s computer lab in his 10th grade in the early 90s to interact with computers and spend the whole night programming.

    Side Hustle during college;

    Selling software to advocates when he was 16 years old in floppy drives.

    Having a roofing startup that helped the problem of pigeons in cities.

    Database that runs on user actions or verbs

    Key Takeaways:

    2:16 - What is CleverTap?

    3:57 - Which companies use CleverTap?

    6:22 - CleverTap’s USPs and why companies prefer using CleverTap over building the feature natively

    11:32 - Suresh and Anand find out that they have similar origin stories

    14:22 - Anand’s early years in school and college

    20:53 - Side hustles in college at 16

    24:37 - Learning by doing

    26:55 - Early days of customer acquisition

    31:23 - Data comes before Analytics

    33:33 - Dealing with variations in data types for various clients

    38:39 - Learnings of a third time entrepreneur

    47:48 - Defining the ideal customer

    50:57 - People hate outbound calls. How to crack this problem?

    55:01 - Dealing with international markets

    57:19 - Acquisitions

    1:08:15 - Organizational Structure

    1:25:30 - ABM at CleverTap

    1:35:55 - Culture

    Happy listening!

  • Ashish Tulsian ran a restaurant before building Posist, a software which runs restaurants.

    Ashish and his stories go a long way.

    Watch this episode for unheard stories and insights like ‘ThugTales of Restaurantpur’ - an unthinkable ABM campaign, marketing to Lawyer, Doctor, CA & Engineer at once, how Posist has perfected event marketing, playbook for B2B conferences, why they didn’t VC capital and more.

    Key take aways:

    1:04 Posist intro

    5:33 Marketing org structure and evolution

    10:32 Hacking SEO with 200 web pages

    15:22 Inflection point in restaurant tech

    17:21 The secret to hiring content writers

    18:57 Marketing to a diverse customer persona

    20:01 Cracking distribution when the persona is fuzzy

    21:02 Content marketing - growing ‘Restaurant Times’ to 3.5M views per year

    21:52 Benefits of avoiding clickbait-y blog titles

    25:27 Evolution targeting SMB to Enterprise

    26:35 Best way to go global

    29:02 Why didn't we raise VC capital?

    31:32 The unthinkable ABM campaign

    44:04 The forgotten aspect in marketing and advertising

    47:21 How Posist have perfected event marketing?

    1:00:32 The Playbook for B2B conferences

    1:00:4:38 Rapid fire

  • Sales team is closer to the customer's problems.

    How do we bring the marketing and product teams closer to customer problems, so that they feel the voice of the customer?

    Voice of the customer is really valuable. It's very hard to get access to it, and even if you get access to it, it's a pain to gain insights from it, and then scale it up.

    This is the pain point which led Shruti Kapoor and her co-founders Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian - Head of Product and Srikar Yekollu - to start Wingman, a conversation intelligence SaaS.

    Wingman acts as the single source of truth for all types of interactions between sales teams and buyers including emails and calls.

    It analyzes them and it gives the ability to deep dive into these conversations and provide the larger analytics and intelligence, to improve revenue.

    Their 1st million revenues came in around 2.5 years, and 2nd million in the next 6 months. They’ve also been part of Ycombinator and SaaSBOOMi GrowthX.

    Wingman recently got acquired by Clari.

    Tune in to this episode to gain insights on right time to get acquired, nitigrities of valuation from the standpoint of acquisition and fundraising, the AI piece on strengthening revenues, how personal branding for you as a founder helps and more.

    1:31 - What’s Wingman?

    3:07 -Why Wingman welcomed the early acquisition by Clari - 3 key factors

    3:22 - Figuring out the valuation

    4:32 - Valuation multiples by Private Equity companies
    7:15 - Valuation multiples during fundraising versus acquisitions

    10:03 - VC valuation v/s PE valuation

    12:19 - What does it mean if a VC is giving a 20x valuation multiple?

    15:43 - The idea of Wingman and how did the founding team come together?
    21:06 - Using AI to gain sales intelligence from sales calls using Wingman

    24:55 - Funds raised and investors

    25:31 - Rationale for high pricing, is it a sales barrier?

    29:18 - ICP of Wingman
    30:56 - SaaS pricing insights for Indian market

    31:31 - Change in org structure after acquisition

    34:45 - Wingman’s go-to market model

    35:50 - Creating proxies of trust - personal branding as a founder
    36:40 - How to increase average ticket sizes
    39:46 - OTE v/s sales quota