Jul 18, 2019 · 18m · top-founders
1454 How This Intercom, Drift Competitor Is Winning in India
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Nathan Latka interviews Gaurav Singh, founder and CEO of Verloop.io, examining how his lean Bangalore-based startup scales enterprise conversational marketing and outmaneuvers US giants across emerging international markets.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 55.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 3.0 Nathan pushing back 5.8
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:28 Singh rejects investment and offers revenue split
Singh questions why Latka needs to invest equity to help with partnerships and counters with an offer to split revenue instead.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 13:35 Latka refuses revenue split termLatka explicitly rejects a revenue cut, explaining that revenue cuts lack long-term upside and would harm the startup's growth cash flow.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:48 Singh explains mixed-language AI advantageSingh educates Latka on why Western SaaS platforms fail in emerging markets, detailing Hinglish and regional mixed-language accuracy as Verloop's moat.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 6:50 Latka unpacks underlying ARR growthLatka catches that annual revenue figures were inflated by 280,000 dollars in one-time services and resets the baseline to assess real monthly SaaS growth.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Verloop.io and Business Model | 5 | 4 | 3 | 6 | Latka challenges Singh on competing with heavily funded giants like Intercom and Drift, pointing out Intercom's European origins and probing a seeming contradiction between self-serve pricing and enterprise focus. Singh clarifies that enterprise adoption actually feeds their self-serve inbound funnel. | |
| Company Financials, Team Size, and Churn Rate | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | Latka drills into the financial metrics, discovering that reported historical revenue included one-time dev fees and re-calculating true recurring SaaS growth. He also presses Singh on interpreting churn statistics accurately given a small enterprise sample size. | |
| Sponsor Message: Monday.com Project Management | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Following a sponsor read, Singh explains enterprise e-commerce integrations and a niche use case turning celebrity Facebook pages into conversational lead magnets. Latka questions how a tiny engineering team can outperform Intercom on integrations and checks for Facebook platform risk. | |
| Investment Proposition and 2018 Revenue Projections | 6 | 4 | 5 | 7 | Latka pitches investing 100k dollars in exchange for equity, which Singh resists by offering a revenue share instead. Latka firmly rejects revenue sharing, demands equity for long-term alignment, and questions the jump to 3.2M dollars in projected revenue. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Verloop's Enterprise Contracts Average $45K Annually
“So for enterprise customers, our average ranges, I mean, average is about 45,000 dollars. Per year? It spreads between, per year. It spreads between 20,000 to 80,000.”
Enterprise Customers Generate Two-Thirds of Verloop's Revenue
“Enterprise is a lot bigger, almost two-third of the entire revenue comes from enterprise.”
Intercom and Drift's US Rivalry Leaves International Markets Open for Verloop
“So I believe, I mean, both Intercom and Drift, the good thing, they both have money, and they both are locked in the battle in United States. Yeah. We have an entire Southeast Europe empty, so Europe is massive for us, Southeast Asia is massive, and India has …”
Verloop Has 18 Enterprise and 200 Paying SaaS Customers
“Around February, 2017 is when we closed our first customer, and since then we have about 18 paying enterprise customers almost 1600 SaaS users, and then out of them almost 200 or so pay.”
Verloop Generated $925K in Net Revenue in FY 2017-2018
“In India, we do accounting from March to March, so it was still from March 2017 to March 2018. ... Nine 25 grand was the actual net money we made.”
Verloop Operates With Nine Employees and Zero Dedicated Salespeople
“We are nine people. The first sales guy is joining on first of May, so we'll be 10 people then.”
Verloop Raised $300K From Indian Accelerator GrowthStory
“We raised 300,000 dollars. Ah, yeah, it was from a local accelerator, Growth Story.”
Verloop Has Lost Zero Customers in the Last 8 to 10 Months
“So in last eight or 10 months, we haven't lost anyone.”
Verloop Handles 50,000 Daily Customer Conversations for Nykaa
“But since they, we have, they have deployed us, we handle almost 50,000 conversations in a day.”
Intercom and Drift Lack Deep Out-of-the-Box Backend Integrations
“Neither intercom nor drift provides the service. I mean, it's too hard to integrate your services.”
Verloop Closed Maersk After a 6-to-9 Month Enterprise Sales Cycle
“So most of the enterprise deals, which we have been closing took about six to nine months for the sales time, and they have just started to kick in now. So we have closed a bunch of bigger customers like Musk in terms of the Musk global shipping, and there are…”
Verloop Targets $3.4M in Revenue by Year-End
“So we are looking at 3.2 to 3.4 million in revenues out of which 2.4 to 2.6 will come from enterprise and risk comes from SAS.”
Drift and Intercom Cannot Serve Mid-Market Companies in Emerging Markets
“So for the companies, I mean, for the mid-market companies who try to hit the bottom of the pyramid where internet has just reached, but education is not there yet, neither Drift nor Intercom can do anything. I mean, the English, the mixed languages have to be…”