The Exchanges

Q That would be the most difficult to get also, right?

A Exactly. That is where the first two, 1824 months took to sign some good, referenceable customers. Also start hiring local team. It's hard to hire local SaaS talent in markets. It's easier to hire in Singapore, but harder to hire in Indonesia. Um, I think, um, I think we did all the hard way. And then, uh, now obviously, APAC is like a, a fifteen million dollar plus business for us. Uh, Southeast Asia plays A and Z. Um, so a lot of learnings. I mean, we basically had to go one market after the, one country after the other. So we have our own learnings of which countries to go after and which countries not. And we also have regrets of not going into Australia much early on.

AI assessment note: “Exactly. That is where the first two, 1824 months took to sign”

Q What have, what have been your biggest challenges in the European market?

A See, Europe again is, I mean, it's, it's, it's, uh, I would say, I wouldn't say like we are still kind of like fully cracked the playbook for Europe. Um, Because it's a lot more fragmented. Um, there's UK, there's Germany, there's France, and there's a lot of these countries. Um, and, um, and you need to have a localized UTM in each of these countries. Um, and so that, that makes it a bit of challenging in terms of how you approach the go to market. Um, and, um, there's, there's also a bit of slowness in terms of change that European companies have. Um, and And yeah, I think of all the markets for us, which have been slow, Europe has been the market. It could also be driven by our execution. We did not, uh, probably execute that well when compared to some of our other markets. But in fact, Middle East has been our fastest growing market. Uh, it's a ten million dollar plus business for us.

AI assessment note: “Because it's a lot more fragmented... you need to have a localized UTM”

Q And how much does the pricing differ between India and the US?

A Uh, I think the list pricing can always be. So broadly, I think it's typically like, two to three X. Okay. 2.4 to three X. Got it. Um, in terms of the, if you take the similar metrics, um, that's an average, and it can be even, there are obviously customers in, in the US will pay, who can pay like four X and so on. Uh, but, but definitely, I mean, Indian, Indian customers are demanding. There's no doubt about that. Um, so, Because of us being operating in India, it helped us kind of build a very efficient technology platform, which basically, we are able to operate at, like, a, like, over 70% gross margins, um, at, like, our platform is, I mean, we are, while we look at outside, from the outside, we are like a, uh, customer engagement company, uh, so we are a lot more data and deep tech company. And the behind the scenes, right? Because we, uh, we currently, as I mentioned, like we currently profile about two billion plus over users across every month and almost half a million, half a billion plus profiles every day. Um, so that's a lot of data that we track. Uh, we track about three billion plus events every single day. So it's, it's a lot of huge data intensive, uh, operations. And, um, because of us being operating in India, we're able to kind of build a very strong technology platform, which operates at significant scale, but at the same time at a lower cost of goods.

AI assessment note: “So broadly, I think it's typically like, two to three X.”

Q And then go to the US market. Why is it the entire ecosystem is saying one thing? Go to the US on day zero.

A See, I think the, the, the, there are two multiple ways to look at this, right? If you do that, I mean, so if you're, if you're able to, if you're seeing what it would mean that if you're seeing traction in India and you're able to kind of do that, first it will take a meaningful amount of time, right? By the time, so there's someone in the US who is doing something similar to you and is also kind of scaling it. So they would have captured large Larger market share. So when, when you then have to kind of go to the US market. So firstly, I mean, yes, in India, you can get to ten million, um, or even twenty million or even thirty million. Again, it depends on what kind of company that you're building. If you're building a venture-backed company, so that means that you're, you're basically kind of looking at, okay, how can I build a hundred million dollar or multi-hundred million dollar year at a company, right? Um, which means that, like, you might, you would, you would kind of like, your growth would come down, uh, at some point if you're just focusing on Indian market. So that's where, I mean, if, if you're in the US, if you're able to kind of even get to like, 10, you're able to still maintain, because it's the same market that you're You just need to kind of continue to invest more into the sales engine and marketing engine. Uh, and because it's a larger market, right? So yes…

AI assessment note: “your growth would come down, uh, at some point if you're just focusing on Indian market”

Q And Ravi, one last thing that I want to cover in the podcast is your org structure, right? What, how has that evolved over a period of time?

A So firstly, I'm, I think I, and, uh, so I'm fortunate to have very strong, um, C-level leadership, um, So my, my CFO and board member, um, is my classmate at, um, like high school and my CRO is my classmate at IIT Karakpur. Um, and, and we have had our product leaders, our engineering leaders, all of them have kind of spent a significant amount of time at MoEngage. Um, so I think, so the way I see it is that, I mean, all of them are actually operated like almost like founders, right? Um, and then at the same time we brought like some seasoned leadership In the recent past, like our chief customer officer and so on. Um, I think, uh, our uniqueness is that because we operate in like five, six geographies or five, six regions. Um, so we needed to have a functional as well as a regional, regional approach to go to market. So functional in the sense that, I mean, we have all the, uh, sales leaders for each region and marketing leaders for each region, all of them reporting into the functional leadership. But at the same time that we have all of our, like I would say, like we have Pods, or you can call it like, uh, mini startups, which are regional, regional, uh, regional units. So we have a separate team for India, separate team for the US, separate team for Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia, and also even LATAM. Um, and all of them have, um, Separate teams across marketing, sales…

AI assessment note: “we needed to have a functional as well as a regional, regional approach”

Q say the company was underfunded, and you were still able to take, uh, you know, big giants on, and there are two players in India, significant in your category, WebEngage and Clevertap. So, at what point, you know, today your revenue is much ahead of both WebEngage and Clevertap. So, at what point, you know, you overtook in this category and became a leader, at least from the India perspective?

A Yeah, and And if you look at this category, right, I mean, I'll give you some kind of like background. And when we started off in 2014, um, so we were almost kind of creating this category of mobile engagement or mobile marketing. Um, and, um, at that point of time, and at that point of time, there were no like mobile marketing solutions, like, um, which were available for mobile app companies. Um, in fact, like our first set of customers were like, We started from India in 2014, and our first set of customers, ah, were the likes of Taxi for Sure, Snap Deal, Big Basket, Ghana, and so on. And back then when we were kind of like selling, when we were kind of like pitching this product was, it was the right, ah, product, ah, in the sense that like everyone was facing this problem of retention. And, um, and everyone needed this solution. So the timing couldn't be better. Um, and so we were able to kind of like quickly kind of onboard many of these, uh, custom, many of these brands.

AI assessment note: “I'll give you some kind of like background. And when we started off in 2014”