SaaSBoomi

Step into the intersection of technology and marketing with the latest episode of the Marketing Nation SaaS podcast. Hosted by Arvind Parthiban, the Co-Founder & CEO of SuperOps.ai, this episode welcomes Ramesh Ravishankar, Co-Founder and CGO of Highperformer.ai, whose previous stints at Freshworks and Google have armed him with unparalleled insights into the digital marketing world.This conversation delves into the evolving landscape where AI meets content creation, debunking myths about AI's role in the future of marketing jobs by highlighting its potential to enhance human creativity and efficiency. Ramesh shares his journey with Highperformer.ai, offering a unique perspective on leveraging AI to build a robust social presence and the strategic importance of identifying your Total Addressable Market (TAM) early on.Get a glimpse into product-led growth strategies that attract leads organically, and the critical decision-making between inbound and outbound marketing based on the stage of your company and the current market demands. The episode draws inspiration from Freshworks' success, showcasing how optimizing AdWords strategy and managing lead quality can scale a business from serving SMBs to mid-market enterprises.Join us for this engaging and insightful session, designed for both budding entrepreneurs and seasoned marketers looking to navigate today's dynamic digital landscape with confidence and creativity. Key Takeaways:1:13 - Content Marketing Revolution: AI's Role3:40 - Ramesh's Journey: Freshworks to Google5:33 - Highperformer.ai: A Strategic Odyssey8:49 - Startup Success: Unlocking TAM13:11 - Growth Hacking with Free Tools21:07 - Scaling Up: From SMB to Worldwide23:58 - Lead Quality: Marketing vs. Sales Dynamics28:10 - The Lead Conversion Debate29:51 - The Inbound Marketing Roadmap: Strategic Insights32:06 - Advanced Tactics in Lead Generation40:39 - GenAI: Transforming Marketing Workflows43:55 - SEO Evolution: The AI Content ImpactKey Mentions:ChatGPTFreshworksGoogleAdWordsLinkedInSalesforceSora.ai

Enjoy this 50-minute podcast where Arvind and Varun get on a call with Ankit Oberoi to decode the dilemma of ABM, or Account Based Marketing. Ankit, being a proponent for documentation and structure, talks about his journey with AdPushup and how they discovered the untapped potential of ABM in a world filled with inbound marketing companies. Having cracked the ABM playbook methodically, Ankit shares some gems of wisdom with Arvind and Varun as the three of them nail down the specifics of what ABM is and how to leverage it to engage prospective clients in ways that really matter. Key Takeaways 01:45 - Meet Ankit Oberoi! 03:50 - The Power of ABM 05:52 - Ankit’s tryst with ABM 08:42 - Big companies are intimidating! 11:38 - Identifying the right ICP for you 14:49 - Pick an ICP for your roadmap or pick a roadmap for your ICP? 18:38 - Outbound vs ABM21:06 - Structuring the Organization for ABM 25:12 - SuperOps’ journey with ABM 27:28 - Using a RevOps team 33:48 - Building the ABM machine 35:35 - Database Management at AdPushup 39:45 - AdPushup’s channels beyond ABM 45:48 - Planning for Zelto’s acquisition  Key Mentions 01:16 - Zelto 02:04 - AdPushup 03:39 - SGx 08:41 - Kayako 39:05 - Almabase 41:32 - Microsoft Azure 41:42 - Google 44:05 - FacebookHappy watching and listening! 🎧

“Never change your SEO team while shifting from SMB to enterprise, because once lost, never regained.” Join Maansi Sanghi and Arvind for more such knowledge bombs as they deep-dive into the world of product marketing. Maansi takes us through her journey of product marketing, and how the team at iMocha braved the tumultuous shift from an SMB model to an enterprise model of marketing. You’ll also find a lot of tips and tricks on how to refine and hone your processes and your pipelines inside your organization. Tune in with Maansi and Arvind as they break down and examine the bare bones of a business and the best practices for marketing teams.Key Takeaways02:25 – Forming strong teams04:50 – Indispensable players in a marketing team05:10 – iMocha’s team structure05:45 – The dichotomy of inbound and content teams08:25 – From SMB to Enterprise11:40 – Your demand generation engine13:19 – Do you have a channel problem or a marketing problem?16:12 – Enterprise marketing tenets18:12 – iMocha’s training protocols22:27 – Setting OKRs for your team30:52 – How deep is your sale?33:40 – Positioning yourself in events43:11 – Making an impression on your customer46:29 – Rapid Fire!Key MentionsiMocha - 05:09FreshWorks - 08:15 HubSpot - 27:11MS Excel - 27:14Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - 51:08

For the next 45 minutes, join our guest Anand Venkatraman as he and Arvind dive deep into the murky waters of partner channel marketing. It's a power packed episode filled with gems of knowledge and wisdom that could substitute for an MBA lecture. Anand introduces the world of partner channels (yes, it's non-MBA friendly), and then goes into the nitty gritties of how to cultivate that side of the business, the best practices while working with partners and the most common mistakes you're better off avoiding when it's your turn. Tune in and listen to Anand and Arvind dissect some really abstract concepts with crystal clear insights—on the very first episode of Marketing Nation!Key Takeaways00:00 - Intro 03:25 - Partner Channels 10104:20 - The Revenue Partners08:04 - The Technology Partners09:58 - Owning the partner channels15:00 - A small start-up’s cheat sheet for partner acquisition20:40 - Vetting a partner’s account books 22:19 - SuperOps’s journey with partner channels23:20 - Feeding the partner engine27:30 - Common mistakes to avoid32:25 - On the importance of PRM 33:57 - Taking MDF more seriously35:33 - A shifting market - On-prem to SaaS44:05 - Anand’s message to founders Key Mentions00:38 - Salesforce00:40 - Akamai00:42, 38:41 - FreshWorks00:47 - CleverTap01:00 - Growthloop.ai06:49 - TCS, Accenture, HCL08:41 - Line Messenger08:48 - KakaoTalk09:20 - Amazon, Google, Microsoft22:20 - SuperOps22:43 - Connectwise22:43 - Kaseya

In Part 2 of Getting SaaS Pricing right, Arvind and Varun bump it up a notch. They discuss key features of a pricing plan like Naming of plans, the ideal number of plans to go with, Add-ons, Discounts, cost-based pricing and value-based pricing.Listen on as the duo share insights from their own experience of having worked for and mentored other companies and of course getting the price right in their own respective startups. Enjoy the show!Key Takeaways3:40 - Decoy pricing plan6:05 - What's the ideal number of price plans?8:30 - Open Vs Hidden pricing14:00 - Contact us to know the pricing 16:56 - Knowing your target audience while selling21:40 - Naming the Price Plans26:10 - Deciding on the value metric 28:05 - Land and expand strategy29:55 - What is value and value-based pricing?35:43 - Is there room for Add-ons?42:12 - How often do we change pricing? 44:23 - Open Vs Closed pricing verdict 46:05 - Dishing out Discounts 49:15 - Importance of pricing in NRR52:00 - Top 3 ways to increase NRR56:15 - Importance of revenue recognition 59:15 - Varun and Arvind’s Pricing pet peevesKey mentionsAppleSuperOpsGirish MZohoFreshDeskPipeCandyWingmanIntercomSpot InstancesSpot.ioChargeBeeManage EngineHubspotIKEASequoiaFor Entrepreneurs

In this episode of the BTS podcast, our hosts Arvind and Varun introduce a new format of discussion to the show and decide to pick each other's brains to go deeper into topics that are pertinent to founders and marketeers. They explore the various aspects of designing the perfect pricing plan for your business keeping in mind various aspects such as the product, the perceived value, the market segment, the industry and the buyer persona. Listen on as they explore pricing strategies of various companies who’ve done it right from the get-go and others who’ve got it right through trial and error, in effect showcasing how setting a pricing plan for your SaaS product may not always be the simplest or most straightforward exercise.Key Takeaways/Timestamps2:37 - MSP - Managed Service Provider3:10 - Silent price hikes in the industry5:33 - 4 levers of business7:32 - Effective communication over Grandfathering10:02 - Pricing game on point11:09 - HubSpot-on pricing14:03 - Unpredictable pricing design16:17 - Don’t reinvent the pricing wheel that works20:28 - Questions to ask before designing the pricing model21:41 - Who’s doing the heavy lifting?22:32 - Top 3 challenges faced by Indian Saas companies24:54 - Perceived value of your product28:55 - Are you selling based on the features of your product?32:52 - Playing to the persona36:45 - Common pricing mistakes in the Indian ecosystemKey Mentions3:30 - Ninjaone7:37 - Netflix11:44 - Intercom12:04 - Hubspot12:11 - Salesforce12:13 - Pipedrive17:10 - Girish Mathrubootham 38:02 - Pipecandy38:19 - Wingman

ExtraaEdge is an early start-up founded in 2016, currently powering 350+ Educational Institutes with the cloud computing solution. Founded by Abhishek Ballabh (ex. HSBC Data Scientist) & Sushil Mundada (ex. HSBC - Lead BA & CRM Architect) ExtraaEdge delivers all the required tools for End-to-End automation of admissions processes. With their combined passion for education and knowledge expertise in Data and CRM, they contribute by developing ExtraaEdge.In this episode, Varun and Arvind explore Abhishek Ballabh’s journey of founding ExtraaEdge and his experience of SaaSBOOMi’s SGx program. Abhishek shares various marketing insights and anecdotes about his journey so far and how his new found “yoda-mindset” has taken him and his company from a primarily hustle-driven outbound sales company to now being predominantly inbound marketing-driven organization.Listen on as this trio share some great insights and banter.Key Take aways0:41 Welcome and Introduction to Abhishek Ballabh & ExtraaEdge2:59 CAGR Banter4:03 Marketing Org Chart7:17 Desi Perception of Marketing & Sales8:41 Coupling the effects of SGx and Covid10:18 Lessons learnt in SGx put to practice11:43 SGx - Growth Vipassana for entrepreneurs 12:44 Who reports to Marketing?19:58 Founder Branding21:20 Channeling one’s Yoda-mindset22:49 Being the face of the brand26:55 ExtraaEdge’s transformation Pre and Post SGx30:41 Apple’s DRI concept 31:56 Transformation from Outbound Hustle to Inbound Marathon36:28 First International client through ABM41:57 Maximizing MarTech through ExtraaEdge Certification Academy48:46 Being synonymous with your industry49:47 Stacking Marketing Dominoes across the prospects journey52:10 The push and pull of Marketing & Sales53:39 Founder being a student of Marketing & ConclusionKey Mentions1:48  HSBC  2:09 Mindtickle  4:41 Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham, Y Combinator  6:30 Sushil Mundada 6:43 SaaSBOOMi Growth X program  8:25 Sachin Bhatia  20:20 Niti Ratnaparkhi 20:58 Yoda (Star Wars)  30:16 Apple30:18 Steve Jobs  36:52 Ankit Oberoi & Ad Pushup  37:20 Bits Pilani Dubai39:35 Nikhil Sutar  43:46 Career Guide 48:01 Robert Cialdini  48:47 Almabase  Happy watching! 

In this Episode, our hosts Varun and Arvind have a virtual sit down with Naveen Goyal, CEO and Founder of NoPaperForms.  NoPaperForms is the India’s largest and most advanced SaaS based Enrolment Automation Platform enabling educational institutions to unlock their potential i.e. Attract, Engage, and Grow their Enrolments. Serving 1000+ customers, NoPaperForms, today, is the de facto choice for anyone in education, looking to grow - be it Preschool to K-12, Higher Education to Online Degrees, Coaching & Training Institutes to EdTech.  Varun and Arvind explore Naveen’s journey of founding NoPaperForms and his insights on the way he’s structured his marketing org, unifying sub-functions, de-positioning the CRM viewpoint and addressing the problem statement head on. Naveen also shares why and how he went about commencing the 100 day challenge across the firm.    Listen on as this trio share some valuable insights and learn from each others experiences.    Key Takeaways1:18 Welcome and Introduction to NoPaperForms 3:23 NoPaperForms Marketing Org Chart  7:54 Aligning Product, Marketing & Sales 9:06 One-man marketing magician?  11:53 100 people in 100 days challenge 18:06 De-positioning the CRM and addressing the problem statement 20:34 Positioning the enrolment process 24:08 Unification of the product 26:49 Introducing the enrolment cloud to the market 30:14 Brand Identity and positioning 34:20 Newspaper campaign through Covid 39:27 NoPaperForms uses Paper 46:25 Psychology, brand retention & conversion 49:10 Rapid fire round 54:19 Conclusion  Key Mentions15:20 Suraj Sapra - Co-founder, NoPaperForms21:21 SRM University, Vellore Institute of Technology30:52 Apple31:07 Volvo, Tesla31:15 Mercedes, BMW32:47 Leadsquared32:55 Extraaedge33:40 Girish M - Founder & CEO, Freshworks40:03 Ashish Tulsian - Co-founder & CEO, Posist

Kalyan Varma is the Co-Founder & CEO of Almabase. Before solving the alumni fundraising problem, Kalyan worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, just as he moved to start an online marketplace which couldn’t scale, yet he kept trying new things to eventually stumble upon the gap in the education system to eventually start Almabase. Kalyan is an alumnus of NIT Warangal and cites BITS Pilani as the foremost institution in the country with the strongest alumni relations. In this episode, as we dug deeper into the idea in this unconventional space, Kalyan breaks down the idea by sharing memorable experiences from some of the big institutions around the world; the challenges he faced in US trying to learn more about the disorganized space, in a bid to fix the broken relationship between the alumni and the colleges to create a win-win situation for both around the world. Tune in to watch an insightful conversation brew among the trio.Key take aways2:14 - A creative way of solving high college tuition fees5:15 - Building blocks of a strong marketing structure10:55 - How can sales empower marketing?14:11 - Thought leadership marketing and category creation17:27 - Getting the first US customers18:34 - Cold emailing and customer development hack21:30 - Going all out to understand your Customers25:10 - Why now is a good time to sell to US?27:20 - Customer agony to features28:47 - The Power of a rock-solid CRM30:38 - How CRM is set up differently for better?33:30 - The CRM mantra that helped us37:01 - 5x scale from ABM compared to Outbound38:25 - The Win-Win-Win Strategy39:44 - Partnering with a billion dollar company as a startup44:31 - Disengagement of Alumni48:12 - Starting up in 2023: What will you do differently?49:33 - Kalyan’s biggest pet peeveHappy listening!🎧

Pranay is a SaaS investor at Matrix Partners India. Before moving to investing, Pranay played several key roles at Freshworks including the Director of Growth Marketing at Freshworks, and managed to ramp up the marketing machinery. He has also worked with the CEO’s office at Freshworks where he was responsible for ramping the revenues from 5 Million to 100 Million. He comes with tons of knowledge on how marketing used to work in the past, how it works today, and how SaaS businesses should think about marketing for the future. Pranay recommends SaaS businesses find new channels where their target audience hangs out as early as possible. There is no single marketing strategy or channel that will always work. It is necessary for businesses to find their “distribution edge”. The BTS Podcast Episode 10 has Pranay sharing several nuggets of marketing wisdom.Tune in to watch the full podcast.Key takeaways:1:24 - Building a SaaS company: Then and Now3:46 - The challenges that businesses face today4:35 - Optimizing costs for lead-gen7:56 - Worthy SaaS examples9:15 - Lessons learnt from experiments13:45 - Winning the confidence of enterprise customers19:19 - The Experience Roadshow26:34 - How to measure the RoI of non-standard events28:03 - Indicators of Product Market Fit and Business Market Fit33:05 - Founders should become students of sales34:35 - Indian SaaS advantage39:41 - Rapid fireResources mentioned2:34 - How Wiz reached $100M ARR in 18 months? Techcrunch8:02 - Rocketlane’s Community Building | The CMO Journal29:55 - Girish Mathrubootam’s first blog announcing Freshdesk as a startup in October 2010 while Freshdesk was publicly launched in June 20114 interesting campaigns discussed throughout the podcastThe van that traveled to 11 destinations | Freshworks Experience Roadshow | 2019Going on air to create virality - #Failsforce campaignReports instill confidence in buyers - Freshdesk | Forrester TEI ReportRocketlane’s rap song announcing fundraisingKey mentions8:00 - Srikrishnan Ganesan of RocketLane        2. 33:00 - Rishi Kulkarni and Sameer Goel  of  Revv

Ashish Tulsian ran a restaurant before building Posist, a software which runs restaurants.Ashish and his stories go a long way. Watch this episode for unheard stories and insights like ‘ThugTales of Restaurantpur’ - an unthinkable ABM campaign, marketing to Lawyer, Doctor, CA & Engineer at once, how Posist has perfected event marketing, playbook for B2B conferences, why they didn’t VC capital and more.Key take aways:1:04 Posist intro5:33 Marketing org structure and evolution10:32 Hacking SEO with 200 web pages15:22 Inflection point in restaurant tech17:21 The secret to hiring content writers18:57 Marketing to a diverse customer persona20:01 Cracking distribution when the persona is fuzzy21:02 Content marketing - growing ‘Restaurant Times’ to 3.5M views per year21:52 Benefits of avoiding clickbait-y blog titles25:27 Evolution targeting SMB to Enterprise26:35 Best way to go global29:02 Why didn't we raise VC capital?31:32 The unthinkable ABM campaign44:04 The forgotten aspect in marketing and advertising47:21 How Posist have perfected event marketing?1:00:32 The Playbook for B2B conferences1:00:4:38 Rapid fire

Yasasree Nerayanuri is the Vice President - Customer Marketing at Sprinklr. She used to be the Director of Customer Marketing & Community at Freshworks before joining Sprinklr. In this episode Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor explores in depth various aspects of Customer Marketing with Yasasree. Tune in! 👇 SaaSBOOMi BTS Podcast brings insights into what goes on Behind The Scenes in the making of some of the successful marketing campaigns, and shine the light on how marketing is done, what works, and what doesn’t, and let the audience learn from the experience of the country’s best marketers ⭕ Episode 8: Customer Marketing : A New Frontier in SaaS Marketing ⭕ Guest: Yasasree Nerayanuri (VP Customer Marketing, Sprinklr) ⭕ Hosts: Arvind Parthiban (Co-founder & CEO, SuperOps.ai) & Varun Shoor (Founder & Ex-CEO, Kayako) Also available to be streamed on: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3S3vX9U Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3zzmwI1 Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/btse8-go 🔔 Get notified when new episodes drop: https://bit.ly/sbpodsubscribe #customermarketing #customersuccess #community #SaaS 2:00 Genesis of customer marketing function 5:00 Scaling beyond $10M ARR 6:14 Marketing org structure evolution at Freshworks 8:48 How to measure and attribute NRR? 12:52 Org structure at Sprinklr v/s Freshworks 15:17 Making the best RoI from networking dinner events 16:41 Difference between community marketing and customer marketing 23:12 KPI for customer marketing 26:41 Customer communities 30:58 Playbook to get ~500 event registrations in a month 32:56 Customer success and customer marketing in action 34:42 Overlaps in customer marketing & product marketing 37:37 Optimizing customer communication at scale 39:35 The need for brand voice 41:23 Overlap between customer marketing and brand marketing 41:43 Customer marketing for single product v/s multi product company 45:12 Microevents marketing 47:40 Customer marketing components 49:51 Pillars of Customer marketing 51:29 How to engage with your advocates 53:22 How do you know a customer is a champion? 55:07 CRM is not a tool, it's a discipline 58:07 Advice to someone starting in customer marketing 58:58 One quality to look in hiring in customer marketing Happy watching!

Aakriti Bhargava is the co-founder of Wizikey, an expert at PR & Communications, and a SaaSBOOMi volunteer. Aakriti has been into PR for 16 years, worked with Naukri.com learning the ropes of PR and has run an agency helping 300+ entrepreneurs, before starting Wizikey, a media intelligence platform.In this episode Arvind Parthiban explores all things PR for a startup with Aakriti. Here are the key take aways.2:55 How PR agencies work?6:13 PR’s impact on Cost of Acquisition & Valuation8:55 Directly reaching out to the media v/s working with a PR agency10:20 The Why now & Who cares factors12:51 Right time to start PR17:40 Breaking down PR : Signalling19:50 Trendjacking20:20 How do you consistently get covered in the press?25:17 PR for Organic Lead generation27:30 Levers of PR31:32 How do you measure PR37:55 How to work with PR agencies the best way?42:22 Biggest peeve in PR42:38 Favourite PR agency43:31 Favourite PR hack43:41 Top 3 media information sources44:10 One advice to startup foundersHappy listening! 

💡 Learn what it takes to stand out in Content Marketing in this age of information overload from someone who has gone from 0 to 1 on Content Marketing. Tune in our latest #BTSpodcast episode 👇 ⭕ Episode 6: The Ins and Outs of Content Marketing ⭕ Guest: Akshatha Kamath (Head of Content Marketing, MoEngage) ⭕ Hosts: Arvind Parthiban (Co-founder & CEO, SuperOps.ai) & Varun Shoor (Founder & Ex-CEO, Kayako) Also available to be streamed on: https://spoti.fi/3LLJAaC https://apple.co/36uzNWl https://bit.ly/sbpodgoogle 🔔 Get notified when new episodes drop: https://bit.ly/sbpodsubscribe #contentmarketing #media #marketing #SaaS Key take aways: 4:04 The Evolution of the Org Chart 6:32 Content Creation Mix 8:46 Org Chart - Content Team 10:53 Customer content & Vertical content 12:51 OKRs and KPIs for Marketing Org 13:54 Content Metrics 16:10 Overall Marketing Team Structure 24:34 Content Cadence 26:05 Practice of Listening to Sales 30:39 Earned Media by World Economic Forum, NewYork Times, and Forbes 37:36 Thought Leadership Content Team 38:49 Thought Leadership Pillars 39:25 Data Stories 43:40 Magic of combining Product Marketing + Content Marketing 46:24 Standing out as a startup in the world of information overload 54:11 Your One Marketing Challenge 54:45 Rapid Fire

PipeCandy is the industry standard data set that tracks 5 million plus e-commerce & DTC brands across hundreds of data points & markets.They transformed from a single to a multi product SaaS company without building new products.They became industry standard by calling themselves industry standard.They 2x-ed their revenue in 4 months with no engineering changes.They called out their USP and gave it a name which not many companies do.They gained the confidence to price higher despite previous battle scars from pricing experiments.How did they do this?What’s the secret ingredient that went into this?What’s the link between PipeCandy and SaaSBOOMi GrowthX?Find answers to these and more in our latest #BTSpodcast E5 feat. Ashwin Ramasamy (Co-founder, PipeCandy), hosted by Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor.Key take aways:1:48 Marketing Org Chart 3:39 Push v/s pull driven product5:14 TAM exercise6:44 PipeCandy Before & After SaaSBOOMi GrowthX 12:08 How to communicate Trustworthy Authority?14:03 Brand Image, Brand Identity & Positioning14:57 How do we visually communicate trust?17:27 Impact of re-branding17:39 How does pricing & segmentation work?21:17 Key metrics for website23:46 Pricing Evolution24:49 Pricing considering competition26:20 Opportunities to increase your revenue28:28 API pricing33:37 What's the value in the case of software?35:22 Rapid fire38:10 Your biggest marketing challenge?Happy watching!Bonus:Don’t miss the Insight Cards hidden inside the episode.

Welcome to the second episode of BTS Podcast - Experiments-led Business Building In this episode we have Laxman Papineni - CEO & Co-founder, Outplay joining as guest. SaaSBOOMi BTS podcast is hosted by Arvind Parthiban (Co-founder & CEO, SuperOps.ai) and Varun Shoor (Founder, Kayako). Here's what you'll learn from this episode. - What's the secret ingredient to making half a million dollars with a Gmail, spreadsheet and a network of bloggers? - How to growth-hack side hustles into full blown businesses? - Secrets of building trust and relationships - How do you decide to let go of fantastic revenue generating businesses to focus on something new? - Why did they decide to hit $20k ARR before fundraising? - Why did they get bored of making enough money? - How to make money while you sleep? - How do you make people refer more? - How to generate limitless customer generated content? - How to leverage case study marketing? - Why will someone shut down a business that has a revenue of $2-3mn? - What're the classic items which first time founders overlook? - How to go about building a business in a crowded market? - Signals to look for when evaluating a new business : hard lessons from 5 years. - Checklist to pick up an idea for a startup - Why Outplay and what's the strategy when you're going behind big players? - How to do investor marketing and raise funds in 6-7 days? - How to hack and get CXOs attention? - What's to be the no.1 goal for all pre-PMF and just after PMF companies? - What's the advice to an entrepreneur setting up their marketing engine? - What's one go to source on learning more on marketing? #SaaSBOOMi #Marketing #Podcast #SaaS

Welcome to another episode of Founder’s Deep Dive! Join our guest, Sachin Bhatia, and our host, Suresh Sambandam, as they delve into several topics, including the formula for happiness, expanding into a global market, and all the challenges and wins that come along the way. It’s a very intellectual conversation where they talk about very abstract and high-level concepts using anecdotes from their own lives. Enjoy the episode! Key Takeaways 02:00 - Meet the Players! 03:24 - Success vs Happiness 06:50 - Are You an Architect or a Contractor? 10:00 - Early 2000s - A Changing India 12:05 - Moving from BPO to Enterprise Segment 17:30 - Ameyo’s First Enterprise Customer 19:55 - Inside Sales and Sales Development 22:20 - Can SMB SaaS Survive? 24:19 - Global Emerging Markets 27:07 - Different Countries and their Ticket Sizes 31:30 - Doing Business in Dubai 35:35 - Team Distribution for International Markets 37:26 - Relationship Building in Emerging Markets 40:20 - Generating Pipelines for Enterprises 45:58 - Ameyo’s Secret Sauce 51:28 - Successful Marketing Strategies 56:18 - Final Words of Wisdom Key Mentions 02:59 - OrangeScape (KissFlow) 05:30 - Freshworks 05:40 - Drishti (Ameyo) 06:35 - HP, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, IBM 06:30 - Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL 11:45 - ZOHO 14:45 - Helion 14:49 - Daksh 15:44 - Ameyo 15:59 - Peppertap 15:59 - Meru 16:00 - UrbanCompany 16:38 - Ola 17:40 - Motilal Oswal 19:36 - HubSpot 

Welcome to another episode of Deep Dive! Suresh, our host, and Aditya Tulsian, our guest, delve into the critical role of ICPs and how organizations deal with acquisition journeys.Aditya is a seasoned entrepreneur who founded Numberz, which was acquired by Chargebee, prior to which he held a very important role at Intuit. After an MBA at ISB Hyderabad, launching QuickBooks in India was the experience that revealed a universal truth to him: businesses worry about cash flow, not accounting. In 2016, inspired by these insights, Aditya co-founded Numberz, initially for Indian small businesses, later expanding globally. The company recently got acquired by Chargebee, uniting visionary forces.In the world of startups, understanding the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is like holding the compass that guides the business. The success, failure, or struggles of any company can be traced back to the clarity or confusion they have about the ICP. Aditya and Suresh nail down what it takes to find your perfect ICP, and the struggles and pressures of navigating an acquisition conversation with both the buyer and the team.Key Takeaways: 00:00 - Meet Aditya Tulsian!07:00 - Finding the perfect ICP - Problem first or person first? 08:13 - Mr. Cook’s billionaire’s business blueprint 09:15 - When Suresh narrowly missed meeting Mr. Cook 11:13 - Nuances of B2B and B2C with ICP 15:15 - Narrowing down customer segments to ICP 17:54 - Your ICP is actually a combination of 3 people 19:09 - How BYJU’S missed the ICP 21:50 - Tally vs Intuit 22:37 - Numberz’s journey with ICP 27:42 - The buyer, user and influencer of Numberz 30:20 - Repercussions of a vague ICP 32:00 - The fundamental difference between Box and Dropbox 33:46 - Product team’s role in finding the ICP 35:00 - The impact of the right ICP on marketing 38:53 - A leader’s job in the organization 39:45 - Critical points to keep in mind during an acquisition 44:16 - Handling uncertainties like a pro during acquisitions 48:44 - Managing your team’s concerns around an acquisition 52:45 - Closing thoughtsKey Mentions01:37 -  Numberz01:40 - ChargeBee03:18 - Intuit03:47 - QuickBooks10:36 - KissFlow12:52 - Facebook19:10 - BYJU’S21:50 - Tally32:01 - Box32:03 - Dropbox41:43 - Freshworks

This episode is special because its the first time we are having a founder from Singapore join the SaaSBoomi Podcast! Suresh Sambandam, CEO of KissFlow has a virtual sit down with none other than Sagar Khatri, the founder of Multiplier, a Sequoia surge backed SaaS business that helps business hire talent globally. We dive deep to talk about Sagar’s motivations to start Multiplier, how AI disrupts his offering and his dream of running a public company.Key Takeaways00:19 - Multiplier and Sagar’s intro01:50 - Multiplier's value prop and its benefits16:15 - Sagar's story behind starting Multiplier and why it's a SaaS business21:14 - Sagar's vision for making payroll an employee-driven phenomenon26:02 - How Multiplier deals with legalities and potential challenges in their business model36:48 - Importance of having a strong product background for Platform dev39:27 - How AI influences Sagar's business46:10 - Role of governments in employment and the gig economy's effect on social contributions53:15 - Sagar's go-to-market strategy and their sales cycle for inbound and outbound leads56:09 - Sagar's thoughts on "The Ride of a Lifetime" by Bob Iger57:10 - What Sagar envisions for the future of Multiplier and his dream of running a public companyKey MentionsAmazon: Sagar mentioned employment use cases with companies like Amazon and Orange.Orange: Sagar mentioned employment use cases with companies like Amazon and Orange.Sequoia: Sequoia has been an investor in Sagar's previous startup and was indirectly involved in his experiences that led to the founding of Multiplier.GCP: Sagar talked about the shift from having server rooms to using cloud solutions like GCP.Azure: Sagar discussed the shift from having server rooms to using solutions like Azure.Kissflow: A platform that Sagar mentioned his company Multiplier uses for their backend.ADP: ADP was mentioned as a traditional payroll processing company that Multiplier aims to outpace with its more modern, employee-driven approach.Tiger Global Management: Tiger Global Management is an investor in Multiplier for their Series B round.DST Global: DST Global is an investor in Multiplier for their Series B round.Pine Labs: Pine Labs is another investor in Multiplier.IIT Bombay: The co-founders of Multiplier are both alumni of IIT Bombay.Kelly Services: Kelly Services was mentioned as a traditional staffing services firm similar to what Multiplier aims to disrupt with their platform.Talent Wiki: Sagar mentioned that they have created a Talent Wiki of 150 countries to help customers with labor law information.Ranstad: Ranstad was mentioned as a traditional staffing services firm similar to what Multiplier aims to disrupt with their platform.Robert Walters: Robert Walters is a recruitment agency where Am Paul Sing, Co-founder of Multiplier, previously worked.Lazada: Lazada is an e-commerce company in Southeast Asia where Multiplier’s CTO previously worked as SVP of Engineering.Freshworks: Sagar compared his company's go-to-market model with that of Freshworks.MTR: A restaurant in India that Sagar loves, mentioned while discussing a meeting in Chennai with Suresh.Sangeetha Restaurants: A restaurant in Chennai that Suresh suggested Sagar visit when he comes to the city. Multiplier is a platform that allows companies to hire talent globally without the need to set up legal entities in each country. With coverage in 150 countries, Multiplier handles all aspects of employment such as contracts, payroll, benefits, taxes, and social contributions, allowing companies to focus on sourcing the right talent. Although Multiplier itself does not do recruitment, it provides the infrastructure necessary for a company to hire globally.The employee is technically on Multiplier's payroll since the legal entity belongs to Multiplier. What seems to matter more is the work relationship and the emotional connection that employees have with their team and their work, not the legal specifics.

Suresh Sambandam, CEO of KissFlow has a virtual sit down with not one but two co-founders, who also happen to be a married couple. Besides finding out about how they set out on founding their respective companies, Suresh also explores their unique working dynamics and relationship, the ups and downs of doing business together, the pros and cons of operating out of a Tier 2 city and of course their secrets to building a successful business model with CallHippo and SoftwareSuggest. Enjoy this first of its kind episode!Key Takeaways5:13 - CallHippo business model7:10 - Inception of CallHippo, founder story and current revenues11:18 - Global customer segments12:44 - Impact of inbound marketing, how to manage your budget for Inbound Marketing15:05 - SEO strategy19:15 - Exercising patience to see SEO results21:57 - Optimizing for humans not Google26:20 - Traffic to sign up rate32:23 -  Tactical hacks for increasing sign up conversion and churn rates34:59 - Marketing to Sales funnel - Handling different ticket size customer segments41:48 - Hiring strategy in a Tier 2 city45:24 - Pros and Cons of operating out of a Tier 2 city50:33 - Spouses to Co-Founders 53:52 - Developing the culture at CallHippo1:01:32 - Vision for CallHippoKey Mentions3:36 Software Suggest3:43 CallHippo3:57 Exotel8:08 Avinash Raghava8:30 Girish Mathrubootham10:55 Ozonetel18:09 RingCentral21:05 Google32:05 Mail Chimp35:48 HubSpot