Jan 3, 2022 · 49m · neon-show
Avlesh Singh on BUILDING WebEngage, 100 Cr Revenue Company & Being Resilient in the Last 10 Years!
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the 100X Entrepreneur podcast, WebEngage co-founder and CEO Avlesh Singh shares the raw story of navigating major pivots, near-death experiences, and strategic rebuilds to grow a 100-crore ARR marketing automation enterprise. He unpacks the critical shift toward first-party customer retention, value-based SaaS pricing, and the relentless founder resilience required to survive in hyper-competitive markets.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 5.4 Guest disagreement 1.6 Siddhartha pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 31:00 Avlesh rejects host's superlative praise
When Siddharth praises him as number one in resilience among Indian founders, Avlesh immediately declines the superlative, insisting he only deserves a consolation prize in survival.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 17:07 Siddharth questions decision to kill legacy productSiddharth pushes back against dropping the legacy business, asserting that keeping the old product live while upselling would have been the logical path.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:35 Avlesh breaking down the reality of company pivotsAvlesh educates the audience and host on why product pivots are trivial for software engineers compared to the grueling task of organizational and go-to-market retraining.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 42:01 Siddharth analyzes Latent View's public listing valuationSiddharth demonstrates deep market understanding by citing Latent View Analytics' revenue multiples and debut surge to challenge traditional VC assumptions about services vs. SaaS.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Avlesh Singh and WebEngage's 10-Year Milestone | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth introduces Avlesh and asks about WebEngage's 10-year journey following a tweet about pivots and near-death situations. Avlesh provides a detailed narrative on the origin as an on-site engagement tool, low ACVs, and the decision to transition. | |
| The Reality of Organizational Pivots and Near-Death Moments | 1 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Avlesh continues his monologue explaining why organizational and mindset pivots are far more difficult than simple product codebase pivots, detailing how sales and pricing structures had to fundamentally change. | |
| Focusing on Emerging Markets and Founder Endurance | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Avlesh finishes his retrospective narrative by discussing their focus on emerging markets and offering advice to early-stage founders to simply stay alive long enough for market timing to align. | |
| Reaching 100 Crore ARR and Surviving Revenue Reset to Zero | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Siddharth asks probing questions about revenue hitting zero during the pivot and suggests it might have been easier to keep the old product active. Avlesh explains why selling to two different personas (CX vs CMO) made maintaining both impossible. | |
| Discovering Value-Based Pricing Through Direct Revenue Impact | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks how WebEngage discovered a 10x higher price point. Avlesh describes the evolution toward value-based pricing tied directly to attributed top-line revenue impact for clients. | |
| Disrupting Enterprise Marketing Clouds by Focusing on Omnichannel | 3 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Avlesh breaks down market positioning in crowded SaaS ecosystems, contrasting legacy marketing clouds from Adobe/Salesforce and mobile-only tools with WebEngage's omnichannel focus. | |
| Personal Resilience and Leading Through Crisis | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Siddharth brings up intense personal and organizational crises Avlesh faced. Avlesh reflects openly on meeting every candidate, client, and investor head-on to explain the situation transparently. | |
| Building a Structural Moat Through Deep Customer Knowledge | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks about the core drivers of his evolution. Avlesh describes accumulated on-the-ground customer intuition as a non-balance-sheet structural moat. | |
| IPO Prospects and the Future of Retention Marketing | 6 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Siddharth cites market data and comparables like Latent View Analytics to ask why WebEngage doesn't IPO immediately. Avlesh explains why 100 crore is too small and lays out the broader structural shift toward first-party CRM data. |
Statements from this episode (20)
WebEngage reached $2M to $2.5M ARR with its original DIY tool
“At our peak, I think we got to like about two, two and a half million dollars of ARR.”
Marketers ascribe more value to user re-engagement than on-site conversion
“Marketing will only put a certain amount of value. They'll ascribe a certain amount of value to the software only if we are able to convert or bring more users back to the website, back to the app, as compared to just being in the business of converting those …”
WebEngage attributes almost all commercial success to its July 2016 pivot
“So in fact, we launched in July of 16th the product stack that you see today, most of the, almost all commercial success of the company that you see today is attributed to that product pivot and launch.”
WebEngage operates at an average contract value of approximately $35,000
“We operate at an ACV of about 35,000 dollars right now.”
Singh: Pivots fail from organizational inertia rather than product challenges
“A pivot is generally perceived as a product pivot. My own learnings in that has been product pivots are very easy. It's like, you know, we are all software builders, right? That's what, that's all we've done for a living, for all our life. You build software o…”
Singh: Compelling marketing tech companies can be built focusing on emerging markets
“We think a very compelling company can be built in our category by focusing on emerging markets and the emerging market opportunities unlike what's been traditionally the common wisdom.”
Singh: Braze's IPO created the first public benchmark for retention SaaS
“Braze recently went public that that's Practically the first new economy company in our category there again, 10, 12 old vintage company that went public, and now at least people have a benchmark, right, in terms of what these kind of companies will look like,…”
WebEngage is generating over $15M ARR and growing 100% year-over-year
“So we, we're doing more than fifteen million dollars of ARR. We're growing a hundred percent year on year.”
Singh: WebEngage has operated profitably for the last three to four years
“Which also means that, you know, we have done these things very profitably over the last three, four years, and that's primarily the DNA of the company.”
Singh: WebEngage serves over 400 customers, half outside India
“So yes, fifteen million dollars of ARR, more than 400 customers globally, almost half the businesses in India, the other half is in other emerging markets, Middle East, Latin America, you know, Southeast Asia, a little bit of Europe also.”
WebEngage's revenue dropped from $2.5M to near zero during its 2016 pivot
“Yeah, we almost got to zero. So I, you know, I told you, right, at peak we were about two, two and a half million dollars. And then when we pivoted, we lost one of our biggest customers because they didn't like us pivoting and, you know, shelving the previous …”
Singh: 80% of WebEngage customers are in commerce, travel, edtech, and fintech
“Most of our customers are in the business of doing online farmers, online travel, education tech, fintech. There is direct, this is almost, these four categories are almost 80% of our customers.”
Evolved customers generate 20% to 25% of their total revenue through WebEngage
“That in, in almost all cases, our customers, they end up making 20 to 25% of their revenue from webinars. In a more evolved state. It takes time for a customer to get there, six to 12 months usually, from the day they go live with WebEngage. But in a more evol…”
Singh: WebEngage customer profile will shift dramatically to enterprise within a year
“So our profile is going to dramatically change in, in a year or so.”
Singh: Top 10-15 modern martech players generate $500M-$600M collectively
“Collectively, all these companies, they do close to 506 hundred million dollars of revenue. And I'm talking about, you know, 10 to 15 companies, right? Top 10 to 15 companies. Now, all this space was created in the last five, six years.”
Singh: Competing marketing tech tools focus exclusively on mobile-first businesses
“If you zoom into what's happening in, in the rest of the category, what the others are doing, they're going after the mobile first and mobile only businesses, right? Each of these products, they're positioned as mobile growth stack tools.”
Singh: Personally joined nearly all enterprise and candidate calls to address controversy
“I used to, wherever required, in most cases, in fact, back in the day, almost a hundred percent cases, I used to go into those calls, those meetings, and I used to tell them that I know you've heard of this. I know you're, you, it's on your head. I know you ha…”
During a company crisis, Avlesh Singh personally called every prospective female hire
“All the women hires in my team during that period, no matter who they were, the hiring wasn't complete until I had spoken to her and clearly told them that this is what it is. This is what it actually was. This is what we did. And here is why you don't need to…”
WebEngage will eventually IPO but won't consider it for years
“As far as WebEngage is concerned, Sid will definitely go that path. That's very clear. But I don't think for the next few years we are even thinking about it. A hundred crores while, you know, it sounds a hundred crores, it's a very small number.”