The Exchanges

Q And, and did the longer sales cycle deter you?

A I think somehow the DNA of the company is aligned to that kind of a model, uh, right? You would hire a very different group if you were running a, uh, developer tool kind of a business versus a SMB SaaS versus a large enterprise SaaS. Uh, the, we have salespeople on our teams who understand that it's going to take two years for them to break through a public sector account. The point is the two years are not casual. You're not sitting for two years, right? They're literally five to 10 activities you're doing every week on each of these accounts still to bring it there. So the DNA is aligned to this. So I don't think we get jittery about the fact that these are nine months sales cycles, eight to nine months sales cycles, et cetera. Uh, we know that we need to put in that effort and chip away at it and we plan accordingly. So it's not like the unit economics of MIMO look any different from Uh, some of the best SaaS companies in the world. Uh, on some of our KPIs, we are actually in the top one percent. Um, and we just have to chip away at this. There's just a different model and playbook you deploy across teams.

AI assessment note: “I don't think we get jittery about the fact that these are nine months sales cycles”

Q So initially for your first 10 BFI BFSI customers, right? Uh, how did you manage to convince that such a high paying software which is sitting on top of your CRM?

A Yeah. So, uh, it was not easy. Many of them spent much lesser on the CRM itself as a whole. Uh, but, uh, One of the things that made us choose BFSI is that their sales cycles are small. They sell to an insurance policy or a wealth management product is sold within two to three weeks, right? So these enterprises, when they even have to spend a dollar, forget about what they're spending on us on top of technology, which is already recognized like a CRM, they need, they understand the pain. They understand that there's a huge gap. They wouldn't believe that a startup will solve this where, you know, the biggest Cloud SaaS company in the world, not AWS, uh, right? Like Salesforce has not already solved it, right? So, uh, it's tough for them to believe that we can do it. And therefore usually, initially to build our credibility in this category, we had to do pilots, uh, right? We always, uh, were clear that we would only do paid pilots so that customers are committed to success too. And we needed to make sure that within a four to eight week period in a POC, we are able to show outcomes. Actual sales increase. Otherwise, on what basis would we ask them to pay us two dollars when they're spending a dollar on the CR, right? And, uh, we built the product out in a way that we were able to do that. And they saw results that they've never seen before. They did not, they saw results that t…

AI assessment note: “to build our credibility in this category, we had to do pilots”

Q And, and what about the subsequent choices? On Bits Plani, uh, on IM Bangalore, and then why choosing?

A Yeah, so Bits was, I was the topper of my batch in, in board exams in 12th, and Bits was a very natural, uh, journey from there. Um, I didn't apply for any of the IITs at that point in time. Uh, and, uh, yeah, Bits just seems, Bits just seemed to be the natural place to go to. Uh, Dad always wanted me to aim high, but, like, I was really not shooting to be the topper, it just turned out. Uh, and this was just a great place to go to. Bits itself was amazing in terms of the experience that we had, whether we were 200 kilometers away from a pizza joint, from anything, in fact. So there was a lot of, and Bits has a very, very unique model in how Academy academics run there. Classes are not mandatory. Attendance is not mandatory. You get to choose amongst six, seven different professors for every course. Uh, it's like a timetable that you have to create for yourself. You have to bid for professors. You have to bid for courses. So there is so much, uh, Independence and, uh, you know, trust, uh, that they place in you, that you also have to hone your judgment on what you want to do, right? You constantly want to have to think and question. You're not just being given a timetable or a coursework that you will get through. You have to think about what you're going to pick, and you'll have to think about which prof, what time of the day, how, like, if you want a window of two hours in th…

AI assessment note: “Bits was, I was the topper of my batch in, in board exams”

Q And when you decided, you know, uh, that you want to Quit McKinsey and build something. How did building a CRM solution for large enterprises came into picture? Like you would have various options, right? And being a consultant, you would study each market very objectively. You would not be tied to a personal problem, which most entrepreneurs tries to solve.

A Yeah, definitely. So I did the whole framework two by two. What am I good at? What do I know really well? I've done 20 plus sales transformation projects. What will people be willing to pay a lot of money for, which is, you know, people who are paying millions of dollars to make it to solve that problem, right? So somewhere I found a big enough bubble and went through the whole process, but I also worked very intuitively, uh, because in the whole MBTI framework, I'm a very, very intuitive person, right? So it did seem like this was top of mind for CXOs and Um, me in my five year career doing 21 sales transformation projects is, uh, marketing and sales. It's by itself a signal that this is such a big problem, right? And I'd work with all the largest, uh, some of the largest customers that McKinsey had. Um, so definitely went through that, uh, process. Now, I was not a CRM. We are a sales engagement platform that sits on top of CRMs, uh, right, but, uh, therefore, it was the intersection of that. What do I know really well, and that people may pay significant value to solve, um, and, uh, is anyone else doing it? It didn't seem like, so it's a new category, and that fit bang into the DNA, uh, that Venkan and I have, because we are not good at Being someone who tries to make something, you know, an existing piece, make it smoother, cleaner, better, cheaper, et cetera. Uh, we were m…

AI assessment note: “I did the whole framework two by two. What am I good at?”

Q Yamli, if you have to share your, some parts of your playbook, right? How to create a 10 mil ARR SaaS company for those SaaS entrepreneurs sitting in India, Selling to India, and then globally. Enterprise SaaS, large ACVs. How to do it? What would you have five to 10?

A Yeah. I'm going for, you know, very, very large enterprise customers. Like, for example, Amagi is another peer company that sells into Streaming, large streaming companies, right? For them, Hotstar, for example, would be a massive account. Uh, similarly, so, unless you're selling to very large enterprise SaaS, I'm not sure starting with India and trying to go global, go global should be the playbook. You can just start global, right? If you're doing SMB, just start global. How does it matter where the SMB is sitting? And make sure that you're global, right, from day zero, right? Uh, the guidance, my playbook would never be to go to one geography first. Every product is unique. Uh, it's target market and ICP is unique. Uh, I have seen SAS companies that, uh, whose ICP is public sector utilities, right? And there is no way you can sell a consistent product to public sector utilities in this, in Asia at this point in time, but in the U S you would have 3000 such companies that you can sell into, right? So it depends on what you're building and who you're targeting and where your customer is sitting, right? We sell to the largest banks and insurers in the world and AXA operates in what? 60 plus countries, right? So, uh, it's a different story, and it's unique to us, uh, right? Just in terms of the zero to 10 or any playbook, right? Initially, your story is always about product mark…

AI assessment note: “Initially, your story is always about product market fit, right? Which segment, what ticket”

Q Uh, you choose Bisplani. I am Bangalore McKinsey. How are these choices made?

A Yeah. So dad, mom is a homemaker. Uh, she was, uh, she comes from a family of 11 kids, and, um, uh, education was valued. They lived in a very rural part, and they used to travel quite a bit of distance to get through, to get to the schools and colleges, etc. Uh, she studied, uh, biology and wanted to be a marine biologist, uh, but also post, uh, her marriage once she had a kid. She, of the first kid, I'm, I'm one of three. Uh, she was insanely focused on making us successful versus pursuing a career. That was, that was her, uh, individual choice, and even today she gets a lot of joy just, uh, by, like, she derives the most joy by spending time with us and doing things for us, right? That's, that's, uh, that's about mom. Dad worked with Nabar. It's, it was a public sector bank, then privatized. Uh, they help finance, uh, rural projects and livelihood projects. Uh, so Nabar led the spearhead of the whole transition as an organization towards, for example, uh, modernization of Indian agriculture, right? A lot of the watershed projects or soil erosion limited, like bore wells, uh, canal irrigation projects, or, Even seed savings and crop rotations, multi cropping, commercial cash cropping, all of these were propagated by Nabad and that Um, I have been able to watch his work from the sidelines, uh, for, I had the chance to watch his work from the sidelines for nearly, like, 1520 ye…

AI assessment note: “So, that's my background, uh, but as parents, that's their background”