The Exchanges

Q Fantastic. And can you share your early journey, uh, in fundraise? Like, did you raise the money for Ridesafe or for Lucas? The first few others.

A No, absolutely. Very, very interesting question. Uh, cause it was a mix of both. Like, we, like, we were actually just building out the app We knew it was a utility. We never knew whether it would be a business or not, and we found some really, uh, supportive early stage investors like Sheetal from GrowX, Manish from PyVentures, and they gave us, you know, like a few 100,000 dollars, and broadly said, don't go back to your job, right? And during the fundraise itself is when we pivoted from a B to C focus, RightSafe, To a B to B focused locus. And we received absolutely no resistance from our investors. And I think, you know, as they say that at that stage, they're truly investing in the team. Uh, I think all of our early stage stage investors really lived that. And they truly supported us from, you know, going from the B to C to the B to B, uh, Side of things. And then within the B to B, uh, you know, during our early series, a Shailesh from Xfinity joined us.

AI assessment note: “cause it was a mix of both. Like, we, like, we were actually just”

Q And, uh, in your fundraise, when did, you know, Bloom and Tiger, uh, and Falconer join in?

A Sure. So we, we first did a seed stage round where basically Manish and Sheetal from GrowX led it. At that point, you know, uh, we got lucky and we were able to onboard some really great angels like Amit Ranjan, who was the founder of SlideShare, uh, Shubham, who's now a VC with Matrix. Uh, Ankit Prithee, who's the founder of Unicommerce. So we had like this angel round. And then we had an early Series A, where Bloom, Bnext, and Xfinity joined it. And Shelesh, Sanjay, Dirk, we got a great chance to work with them. Manish, Shelesh, and Sanjay also sit on our board. So we have been working with them closely. And this was about four years back. Uh, then over the next couple of years, you know, uh, Rocketship, uh, which is Anand and Venki from the Valley, they joined our cap table. In addition with, uh, Pi Ventures itself, like on earlier, it was Manish as an individual. Uh, then in 2019, at this point, broadly, uh, we had, we had reached our first million. We had a product market fit. We were expanding From smaller customers to the bigger customers. And what was now ready to be tested was will this product expand beyond India, right? So that time we set out to raise our series B. That's where Tiger and Falcon joined it. Then that can a product which is While designed for the world, built from India, will it actually play globally, right? So will we go to our one to 10 journey, rig…

AI assessment note: “early Series A, where Bloom... That's where Tiger and Falcon joined it.”

Q So you mentioned a few, uh, very key important points. For example, earlier you were working out of passion. Now it's like a lot of discipline has come into your thinking and actions as a leader. Can you share some examples of that, the changes?

A So, uh, previously, for example, when we would be, uh, building a product, Like, we didn't need to build it to certain infosec standards and things like, uh, our average salary costs were significantly less, right? So we could, we could, uh, think about trying out building a completely new module, new product, you know, 40, 50,000 dollars spent, uh, you know, which, which gets you, like, about two, three engineers for three quarters in that and their working budget, right? But today we know like our products will take about a year. We'll take a bigger team. And they're typically like a, like a 750 K to a million dollar experiment. If I'm doing that, I want to make sure that I have at least a range of what is my market sizing for it? What kind of customers am I going after? Are those customers common to my existing customers? Uh, else I need to start a GTM separately, right? So your, as your scale increases, your cost of mistakes increases. So you want to just reduce the number of mistakes. You can never eliminate them because you want to optimize for growth, but you want to reduce the number of mistakes you make. Also in an enterprise company, uh, any customer facing mistakes have longer sales cycles, which you are working with customers who will want to grow at 20 to 40%. While as a company, your growth target is 200 to 300 or 400%, right? So you need to parallelize your effor…

AI assessment note: “today we know like our products will take about a year... a 750 K to a million dollar experiment”

Q Got it. And what has been the change in how you think about distribution? Since, since, uh, now you are at a scale, which, as you said, right, it requires heavy focus on distribution.

A Yeah. So there has been two key changes in distribution for us, uh, which we are underway of executing. One, till now we primarily had a central sales team. Now sales comprises of your inside sales, marketing, the actual field sales, customer success, solutions who will, the sales engineers and solutions who will actually make the, uh, thing live. Now, till now, we primarily had like a central team, which was serving multiple regions, uh, while each of the regions had just local direct field service teams. Now, we are creating entire full stack P&L in India, Middle East, Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia, with each of the regions having their own senior leadership heads, uh, their own customer success, their own deployment teams, their own marketing team. The second critical change has been building a partnership and reseller ecosystem. So over the, right, a year back, about 95% of our sales were done directly. Today, about 20% of our sales are done with partners, and over the next two years, we want to take that number up to 50%, right? So, two key changes. One, making entire region their own autonomous P&L, right, full stack, Uh, sales team for each of those things. So becoming a far more, uh, so that, you know, there is no cannibalization of resources between geographies. Like if Europe needs to move forward, Middle East doesn't need to sacrifice. And second, to redu…

AI assessment note: “there has been two key changes in distribution for us, uh, which we are underway”

Q Tell us about, you know, how the culture of locus has evolved over a period of time. Like, is, is there a benchmark which you measure yourself to among, you know, cultural standards that you have set?

A So locus started out by everybody actually living in, in the same house. Uh, and as we, so we, so basically I had, when Geet and I started, I requested my then flatmate to move out. So Geet could move in and we both started working, uh, from the hall while sleeping in the bedroom. And we realized that's a really efficient way of working. So when the third, fourth guy came in, we just rented one more flat and that actually kept going for the first, uh, 15 people. And by the end of it, you know, we were almost like running like a nine room fully functioning hotel. Uh, you know, fully serviced hotel, and so we started out with a really, really close cult. Uh, not only did we know each other, we knew each other's families, you know, each other's significant other. Uh, from there, now we have grown to a team of 200, uh, split across six cities, three continents. A majority of the team focused in, uh, stay in Bangalore with, uh, sales team spread across, as I was mentioning a little earlier, in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh, Berlin, UK, North America. We had three, three very critical, uh, things that we always used to emphasize while hiring, which was ambition, commitment, and integrity. Now, those are not just, like, uh, why I'm just hesitating here is that those are not, like, words on walls at Locust, right? Those are something that we imbibe in every day. Like, a designer is completely f…

AI assessment note: “started out by everybody actually living in, in the same house”

Q Got it. Fantastic. What has been the mindset changes in you as a leader? Please go ahead.

A I think it's very important and that's been my personal goal, uh, over the last, Last 300 days that can I evolve from a founder to a CEO, right? And I think the biggest, and of course I'm simplifying it, but the biggest change in that is to move from operating from pure passion to passion plus discipline, right? As an individual, as well as your entire organization. So things like focuses on metrics, focuses on OKRs, focusing on leadership hiring. That becomes an equally big part of my job today. Uh, whereas three years back, 80% of my focus was on product and technology, right? Uh, but today, organization design, uh, as I mentioned, leadership, which involves leadership, hiring the right metrics, collaboration metrics, their own core KPIs. Having the right way of tracking them as well as then interpreting them, right? Uh, and being able to make those decisions. So that's been the biggest change, uh, that we have been undergoing and we want to undergo that. How do we grow from a founder to a CEO? And the idea is to also inculcate that further in the team that Ambition comes from disciplined execution, right? Like we are past the stage where we can just go like, oh, let's do it. Uh, today we need to have a very clear, committed answer in our head as to why we are doing what we are doing. And that is what will give us the power to sail through tough times, right? If we, if we ver…

AI assessment note: “move from operating from pure passion to passion plus discipline”