Numerous SMB founders worldwide often believe that automation is exclusively designed for large corporations and MNCs, which couldn't be further from the truth. Introducing Pabbly, an Indian startup that provides automation and integration solutions as a Zapier alternative to SMEs, solopreneurs, and freelancers around the globe.
Established in 2015 by Neeraj Agarwal and Vivek Lodhi, Pabbly assists SMBs in streamlining their business processes through connecting various cloud apps using Pabbly Connect and automating repetitive tasks. Recently, we had the pleasure of hosting Neeraj on our show to discuss Pabbly's journey, its competitive pricing strategy, marketing mix, and vision for the future.
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00:00:32
Saikat Pyne: please join me in welcoming Mira Jaar, the co-founder of Tali,
00:00:35
Saikat Pyne: a business management software suite that features Tali Connect, a
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Saikat Pyne: popular Zap PR alternative that's taken the Internet by storm.
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Saikat Pyne: So it's exciting for me to bring somebody who has
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Saikat Pyne: a very solid product mindset and a native understanding of
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Saikat Pyne: what it is like to build
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Saikat Pyne: tech
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Saikat Pyne: from grounds up to the point where you are able
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Saikat Pyne: to fuel growth on the back of
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Saikat Pyne: legions of fans, both on social media and otherwise. Thank
00:01:05
Saikat Pyne: you for taking time out. Welcome to the U Incorporated
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Neeraj Agarwal: podcast. Thank you Psyche for inviting me for the show.
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Neeraj Agarwal: I think this is really my pleasure for being in
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Neeraj Agarwal: the show and connecting with all the fans of you Ink.
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Saikat Pyne: Tell us a bit about yourself. Age. How did the
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Saikat Pyne: idea for and especially connect really come about for you
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Neeraj Agarwal: and your co-founder psyche? I have been a product person
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Neeraj Agarwal: for quite some time. I started my business journey by
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Neeraj Agarwal: teaching people on P H P. Right, so the back
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Neeraj Agarwal: in 2009, I was there. We started and set it up.
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Neeraj Agarwal: A small training institute for teaching students P H P,
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Neeraj Agarwal: that is when we started learning how codes work, how
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Neeraj Agarwal: things are built,
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Neeraj Agarwal: and I think that is the startup of the journey.
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Neeraj Agarwal: So that was in 2009. We were doing and running
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Neeraj Agarwal: a small training institute. We ran it for around a
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Neeraj Agarwal: couple of years and then from within the Training Institute,
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Neeraj Agarwal: we thought that we may pick some of the best
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Neeraj Agarwal: brains from the Training Institute and start building something up right.
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Neeraj Agarwal: First distinct in the coding segment was a WordPress theme
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Neeraj Agarwal: that we developed on a platform named as ink themes. Right,
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Neeraj Agarwal: So we started our journey. I think I should say
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Neeraj Agarwal: we started our online journey by building WordPress themes and
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Neeraj Agarwal: that possibly evolved us to see how the Internet works,
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Neeraj Agarwal: how things are connected. I think that took us on
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Neeraj Agarwal: the right to build,
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Neeraj Agarwal: and that is where you see public connect now See,
00:02:36
Neeraj Agarwal: it has been a long journey. There are a lot
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Neeraj Agarwal: of things that happens when you start building your products.
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Neeraj Agarwal: You learn from the people itself. You learn from the customers.
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Neeraj Agarwal: I think from the customer's feedback there is always a
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Neeraj Agarwal: lot to learn and I think public connect. I shouldn't
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Neeraj Agarwal: say that it is something which cropped up in the
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Neeraj Agarwal: mind in the middle of the night. I think it
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Neeraj Agarwal: is more around. It is more around
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Neeraj Agarwal: people feedback. Who told us that? Hey, we need to
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Neeraj Agarwal: connect this thing with this thing. Do you have a
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Neeraj Agarwal: solution for that? I think that is how public connected
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Neeraj Agarwal: started up. OK,
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Saikat Pyne: How did the journey for PAB start? What was the
00:03:14
Neeraj Agarwal: first product for? See, We were developing WordPress theme initially
00:03:18
Neeraj Agarwal: when you were developing WordPress theme One of the things
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Neeraj Agarwal: that primarily people started to ask us was Is there
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Neeraj Agarwal: a way we can build and integrate a form inside
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Neeraj Agarwal: our WordPress website? Right
00:03:31
Neeraj Agarwal: now? A lot of people might think that when wordpress
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Neeraj Agarwal: is talked about and when forms is talked about, someone
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Neeraj Agarwal: is thinking about WordPress plug in. But I think in
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Neeraj Agarwal: back in those days I thought that maybe instead of
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Neeraj Agarwal: creating a WordPress plug in, how about creating a A
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Neeraj Agarwal: application or a cloud application that can be used to
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Neeraj Agarwal: create forms for just about any platform out there? And
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Neeraj Agarwal: it is not just it to wordpress.
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Neeraj Agarwal: So my first stint in the cloud space was to
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Neeraj Agarwal: create a form solution back in those days, it was
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Neeraj Agarwal: named as form get, but eventually it became PAB forms
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Neeraj Agarwal: when you are creating forms. It was a cloud based
00:04:07
Neeraj Agarwal: solution that allowed people to create forms. We are still
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Neeraj Agarwal: It is still there on the public platform as well
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Neeraj Agarwal: right now and people can just click the button, they
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Neeraj Agarwal: can create a form and they can set up the
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Neeraj Agarwal: forms and things like that.
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Neeraj Agarwal: Now, see, when you create forms, the one of the
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Neeraj Agarwal: foremost things I think is the integration thing. And people
00:04:26
Neeraj Agarwal: used to always come to us and ask us that
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Neeraj Agarwal: How can I send my leads from the forms to
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Neeraj Agarwal: someplace else, right? And and see back in those days,
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Neeraj Agarwal: we used to recommend Zaire to just out everyone and
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Neeraj Agarwal: considering a context of Indian people here, I think see,
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Neeraj Agarwal: the general Indian audience is someone who cannot afford to
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Neeraj Agarwal: pay a very huge sum for integration purpose and I think,
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Neeraj Agarwal: see the mix of ideas together collaborated, and somehow they
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Neeraj Agarwal: they turned out to help us in creating in the
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Neeraj Agarwal: journey of public connect. And I think that is how
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Neeraj Agarwal: it all started and it started doing well. Yeah, got
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Saikat Pyne: it. So building WordPress themes and given I think
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Saikat Pyne: around 80 or 90% of all websites globally are made
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Saikat Pyne: on WordPress. It's like a huge percentage, right?
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Neeraj Agarwal: It was a huge percentage. And back in 2011, there
00:05:22
Neeraj Agarwal: were not many people players who were building WordPress themes.
00:05:26
Neeraj Agarwal: And to be honest with you, back in those days,
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Neeraj Agarwal: what we did is we created a WordPress theme and
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Neeraj Agarwal: because I didn't know a single bit of marketing or
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Neeraj Agarwal: sales at my end. So what we effectively did is
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Neeraj Agarwal: the only marketing we understood was to create a free
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Neeraj Agarwal: version and launch it on wordpress 20110.0 r g back
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Neeraj Agarwal: in those days.
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Neeraj Agarwal: So we created this nice theme from for WordPress, and
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Neeraj Agarwal: we just posted that WordPress theme directly on the wordpress
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Neeraj Agarwal: 0.0 r G platform. Somehow people started liking that design,
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Neeraj Agarwal: and I think in the 2013 or 2014 era, it
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Neeraj Agarwal: was within the top 10 rankings of wordpress 100.2 r
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Neeraj Agarwal: g free themes,
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Neeraj Agarwal: right? Got it. And then we what we thought is key.
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Neeraj Agarwal: This theme is already free. How about we add up
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Neeraj Agarwal: a premium feature for on this specific theme itself and
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Neeraj Agarwal: try to sell it right. And that is how the
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Neeraj Agarwal: journey started. That is how people started adopting the premium
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Neeraj Agarwal: version of the theme as, and that actually allowed us
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Neeraj Agarwal: to earn a little bit of money during the back
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Neeraj Agarwal: during the back 2013 days as well.
00:06:27
Neeraj Agarwal: And and I think see, once you start to once
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Neeraj Agarwal: once you start to earn money online, you understand that
00:06:33
Neeraj Agarwal: this is something which is possible and people if you're
00:06:36
Neeraj Agarwal: building things. See, I come from a very small city.
00:06:40
Neeraj Agarwal: I won't say a very small city, but we consider
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Neeraj Agarwal: it a tier two or tier. So we are based
00:06:44
Neeraj Agarwal: here in Boal and is right here in central India.
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Neeraj Agarwal: It is almost 1000 kilometres from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or
00:06:51
Neeraj Agarwal: whatever
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Neeraj Agarwal: it is the tech
00:06:53
Saikat Pyne: hubs. And so
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Neeraj Agarwal: yeah, so it is almost 1000 kilometres away from each
00:06:58
Neeraj Agarwal: and every possible tech hub, right? Yeah, And if you
00:07:01
Neeraj Agarwal: are sitting in you are building a WordPress theme you
00:07:03
Neeraj Agarwal: are selling in selling this that theme in US or
00:07:06
Neeraj Agarwal: Canada that start to give you a level of confidence
00:07:10
Neeraj Agarwal: that yes, something can be done from the comfort of
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Neeraj Agarwal: your home. So yeah, that is how it all started.
00:07:16
Saikat Pyne: So public started as potential integration tool for wordpress websites.
00:07:22
Saikat Pyne: You could have limited it to something like a plug in.
00:07:24
Saikat Pyne: But then you realise there is a pricing challenge with
00:07:28
Saikat Pyne: emerging markets with Zaire, and that was the insight that
00:07:33
Saikat Pyne: led you to create public connect. Now
00:07:36
Saikat Pyne: who is the
00:07:36
Neeraj Agarwal: ideal p g for when you say p G? What
00:07:39
Neeraj Agarwal: do you mean?
00:07:40
Saikat Pyne: The target audience? The most ideal
00:07:42
Neeraj Agarwal: customer profile. I think in at our end we say
00:07:45
Neeraj Agarwal: IC p so IC p Anyone who wants to integrate
00:07:49
Neeraj Agarwal: one platform with another is usually our IC p right.
00:07:54
Neeraj Agarwal: The only thing you see at our end we always
00:07:56
Neeraj Agarwal: thought that we want to build it as a solution
00:07:58
Neeraj Agarwal: which is used by masses.
00:08:00
Neeraj Agarwal: Right? Right. So, to be honest with you, we are
00:08:02
Neeraj Agarwal: not enterprise focused per se. We are more B to
00:08:06
Neeraj Agarwal: B solution for small and medium businesses, right? So anyone
00:08:11
Neeraj Agarwal: who needs a way to integrate their applications together can
00:08:15
Neeraj Agarwal: use public connect and is an ideal customer for us.
00:08:18
Neeraj Agarwal: One of the things that I saw while building public connect.
00:08:21
Neeraj Agarwal: And in fact, the level of people that joined us
00:08:25
Neeraj Agarwal: on the public connect journey is the
00:08:28
Neeraj Agarwal: initially when you are launching a very new product in
00:08:31
Neeraj Agarwal: that space, you need a few people who are like
00:08:35
Neeraj Agarwal: evangelists for you. Product evangelist. Yeah. So when we started
00:08:40
Neeraj Agarwal: selling public connect on day One, we thought that maybe
00:08:43
Neeraj Agarwal: we have to come up with a different pricing model.
00:08:46
Neeraj Agarwal: And that is when we decided that maybe
00:08:49
Neeraj Agarwal: it is something where we should be launching a lifetime
00:08:52
Neeraj Agarwal: of a public connect product so that more and more
00:08:55
Neeraj Agarwal: people can adopt the product. And I think that is
00:08:58
Neeraj Agarwal: how the journey with Public Connect started. We started with
00:09:02
Neeraj Agarwal: a nice product. See, when I say nice now, I
00:09:05
Neeraj Agarwal: feel two days, two years down the line that it
00:09:07
Neeraj Agarwal: was not as nice as I say it is. It
00:09:10
Neeraj Agarwal: was a nice it was a OK product back in
00:09:12
Neeraj Agarwal: those days, but it worked really, really,
00:09:15
Neeraj Agarwal: uh, reliably. So, see, when you are building an integration software,
00:09:19
Neeraj Agarwal: one thing that really matters is even if it has
00:09:22
Neeraj Agarwal: a certain number of if, even if it has a
00:09:24
Neeraj Agarwal: less number of features, but the integrations should work reliably 100%
00:09:30
Neeraj Agarwal: of the time. So that is one thing that we
00:09:32
Neeraj Agarwal: actually focused while building the platform was that even if
00:09:36
Neeraj Agarwal: we have one or two features that are lesser than
00:09:39
Neeraj Agarwal: our major competitor, that happens to be Zaire, that will
00:09:43
Neeraj Agarwal: be fine, but it should work reliably
00:09:46
Neeraj Agarwal: if someone is integrating a solution. A with solution. B.
00:09:49
Neeraj Agarwal: It should always work right and see it permits in
00:09:54
Neeraj Agarwal: just about everything we do, even if even if someone
00:09:57
Neeraj Agarwal: is starting up a cloud application, someone might say that Hey,
00:10:01
Neeraj Agarwal: pick up the cheapest server because you're just starting up.
00:10:03
Neeraj Agarwal: We say we do not want to pick up the
00:10:05
Neeraj Agarwal: cheapest hardware. We want to pick up a W if
00:10:07
Neeraj Agarwal: we are
00:10:08
Neeraj Agarwal: when starting it up. If so, as per reliability is concerned,
00:10:11
Neeraj Agarwal: we want it to be there and and I think
00:10:13
Neeraj Agarwal: to see a lot of people joined us in the
00:10:15
Neeraj Agarwal: journey while building the product. There was a phrase that
00:10:18
Neeraj Agarwal: is common nowadays, which is known as built in public. Yes,
00:10:22
Neeraj Agarwal: you should always be building in public,
00:10:24
Neeraj Agarwal: and that is a very same approach that we took.
00:10:26
Neeraj Agarwal: We created a Facebook profile building Public connect. I started
00:10:31
Neeraj Agarwal: posting about what public connect is how it can help
00:10:34
Neeraj Agarwal: you different use cases of automation and all those kind
00:10:37
Neeraj Agarwal: of things. And we started posting those details on Facebook
00:10:41
Neeraj Agarwal: just about every day possible. Now, if you try to
00:10:45
Neeraj Agarwal: just post about your product all the time, people are
00:10:48
Neeraj Agarwal: not always
00:10:49
Neeraj Agarwal: interested. True, right? True. So I just started posting about
00:10:53
Neeraj Agarwal: whatever was happening in my life, right, OK, and I
00:10:56
Neeraj Agarwal: started sharing it on the Facebook community itself. Initially, I
00:11:00
Neeraj Agarwal: think I I had a community of about 203 100 people. Slowly,
00:11:04
Neeraj Agarwal: it started growing. The lifetime deal was always there because
00:11:07
Neeraj Agarwal: we wanted users to be on the platform. I started
00:11:10
Neeraj Agarwal: teaching use cases. My team actually helped me a lot
00:11:13
Neeraj Agarwal: as well,
00:11:14
Neeraj Agarwal: and I think slowly a lot of people started adopting
00:11:17
Neeraj Agarwal: public connect and somehow it started creating a little bit
00:11:22
Neeraj Agarwal: buzz everywhere, right. But the buzz started from
00:11:25
Saikat Pyne: the Facebook group,
00:11:26
Neeraj Agarwal: right? It started from the Facebook group. The initial start
00:11:30
Neeraj Agarwal: was when we started offering a lifetime deal for a
00:11:32
Neeraj Agarwal: product that is not available on lifetime deal anywhere else.
00:11:35
Neeraj Agarwal: Printon Softwares in itself is a complicated product because see,
00:11:39
Neeraj Agarwal: you are managing at least 1 different integrations at any
00:11:42
Neeraj Agarwal: point of time,
00:11:44
Neeraj Agarwal: right? Break all the time considering the break because the
00:11:47
Neeraj Agarwal: EPA are changing because the updates are made to an
00:11:50
Neeraj Agarwal: external application. So you always have to be on your
00:11:53
Neeraj Agarwal: toes to update the platform as soon as the E. P.
00:11:56
Neeraj Agarwal: I s are updated or as soon as any updates
00:11:58
Neeraj Agarwal: are done,
00:11:59
Neeraj Agarwal: right. So it is a little bit complicated product and
00:12:03
Neeraj Agarwal: no one is offering the very same product on Lifetime. Right?
00:12:08
Neeraj Agarwal: So we were the first player who started offering an
00:12:11
Neeraj Agarwal: integration software on Lifetime,
00:12:13
Neeraj Agarwal: and somehow it started picking up traction because people were
00:12:17
Neeraj Agarwal: people wanted the integration software to be there. And I
00:12:21
Neeraj Agarwal: think that is how the journey started. And that is
00:12:24
Neeraj Agarwal: how the pricing
00:12:25
Saikat Pyne: bit of it that you said Miraj, which is you
00:12:27
Saikat Pyne: didn't want to be known as the cheap alternative to zappia.
00:12:32
Saikat Pyne: You just want it to be known as a cost
00:12:35
Saikat Pyne: efficient but still reliable alternative to zap PR. Right? But
00:12:39
Saikat Pyne: the problem with reliability when you're pricing a product competitively,
00:12:42
Saikat Pyne: especially digital software,
00:12:45
Saikat Pyne: is that a lot of times you are in this
00:12:47
Saikat Pyne: position where your software costs or the your maintenance costs
00:12:51
Saikat Pyne: of your products are eating into your margins. Right. So
00:12:54
Saikat Pyne: how do you determine the L T. D Price? What
00:12:57
Saikat Pyne: led you to come to that 1 $49 initial L
00:13:01
Saikat Pyne: T D Price. And then what led you to increase
00:13:03
Saikat Pyne: it to
00:13:03
Neeraj Agarwal: to 49 So I could see a lot of people
00:13:06
Neeraj Agarwal: nowadays are offering lifetime of their product, I think is
00:13:09
Neeraj Agarwal: something which is now popularised by apps and other deal site.
00:13:14
Neeraj Agarwal: Yeah. You see, to be honest with you, that is
00:13:17
Neeraj Agarwal: actually a very good question that you asked is how
00:13:19
Neeraj Agarwal: you are making the whole thing sustainable with Lifetime. Yes, right? Yes.
00:13:23
Neeraj Agarwal: Because I think that is also the question which is
00:13:26
Neeraj Agarwal: actually asked by a lot of our users as well.
00:13:29
Neeraj Agarwal: Like how you make the whole ecosystem sustainable. See, in
00:13:32
Neeraj Agarwal: our case, we actually took a very
00:13:34
Neeraj Agarwal: different and I think, a little bit different approach for
00:13:38
Neeraj Agarwal: selling Lifetime right. One thing that I really found was
00:13:42
Neeraj Agarwal: when people were selling their lifetime deal over their recurring subscription.
00:13:46
Neeraj Agarwal: They sold it through a deals marketplace in general. Now,
00:13:49
Neeraj Agarwal: if you go to any deal, marketplace out there, for example,
00:13:52
Neeraj Agarwal: if you go to Apps Sumo, the typical commission percentage
00:13:57
Neeraj Agarwal: that a lifetime company has to give to apps suo
00:14:00
Neeraj Agarwal: is roughly around 70%
00:14:02
Neeraj Agarwal: right. So it is actually 70% that the marketplace takes
00:14:07
Neeraj Agarwal: from you and it is the 30% that you get
00:14:09
Neeraj Agarwal: from them, right? So 70 is a ratio that happens
00:14:13
Neeraj Agarwal: on the deal side. So the first thing that we
00:14:15
Neeraj Agarwal: did is we always thought and we always believed in
00:14:18
Neeraj Agarwal: ourselves where we said that I don't know why, but
00:14:22
Neeraj Agarwal: I always said that I think I can sell this software,
00:14:25
Neeraj Agarwal: our ourselves. We do not even need the deal site.
00:14:27
Neeraj Agarwal: So that actually helped us a lot because we were
00:14:30
Neeraj Agarwal: effectively paying zero commissions to any deal platform. We were
00:14:33
Neeraj Agarwal: doing the lifetime deal ourselves at our
00:14:35
Saikat Pyne: end, and all the marketing that you were doing were
00:14:37
Saikat Pyne: via the Facebook group. That's all
00:14:39
Neeraj Agarwal: that's all. That's all
00:14:40
Saikat Pyne: because the perception of L t. D. And this is
00:14:44
Saikat Pyne: something that I'd want to love to begin here needed
00:14:47
Saikat Pyne: Whenever I speak with SAS founders, their perception of the
00:14:52
Saikat Pyne: implication of L T. D is very different from yours.
00:14:56
Saikat Pyne: A lot of SAS founders or even L T D.
00:14:58
Saikat Pyne: Experts will tell you
00:15:00
Saikat Pyne: that the job of an L T. D is to
00:15:02
Saikat Pyne: get you money ASAP. And the way for you to
00:15:06
Saikat Pyne: get money ASAP and start making money ASAP is giving
00:15:10
Saikat Pyne: it for a cheaper price, potentially and getting some working
00:15:13
Saikat Pyne: capital and having users purely as a paid product feedback
00:15:18
Saikat Pyne: funnel
00:15:19
Saikat Pyne: and then going forward, your M r R is going
00:15:22
Saikat Pyne: to be the customer base. Or if your M R
00:15:25
Saikat Pyne: R is going to then determine in some ways the
00:15:28
Saikat Pyne: money that you're making, people don't look to make money
00:15:31
Saikat Pyne: from L T. D itself. And what you're telling me
00:15:34
Saikat Pyne: is you wanted to save on the commission to the platform.
00:15:37
Saikat Pyne: Were you ever worried that this l t. D. Might
00:15:40
Saikat Pyne: not work, given the amount of traffic that comes to
00:15:42
Saikat Pyne: some of these platforms that you might have missed out
00:15:45
Saikat Pyne: on at that point? Did that thought cross your
00:15:47
Neeraj Agarwal: mind? Actually, like I think, see, a lot of things
00:15:50
Neeraj Agarwal: depends upon the product that you are building, uh in
00:15:53
Neeraj Agarwal: the marketplace at a given point. of time, right? For example,
00:15:57
Neeraj Agarwal: see if you are building a product that is a
00:16:00
Neeraj Agarwal: bit more revolutionary, a bit more
00:16:04
Neeraj Agarwal: a thing that is not available anywhere else. See, people
00:16:07
Neeraj Agarwal: do the marketing for you automatically. True, I think in
00:16:11
Neeraj Agarwal: our case, because we released it back in 2020 just
00:16:14
Neeraj Agarwal: before the covid hit. A lot of people were moving
00:16:17
Neeraj Agarwal: during the same time on getting their things on online. Yeah,
00:16:22
Neeraj Agarwal: I think during the very same time we launched a
00:16:24
Neeraj Agarwal: product that was doing automation.
00:16:26
Neeraj Agarwal: Yes. So, yeah, I think that actually helped us a lot. See,
00:16:31
Neeraj Agarwal: from money perspective, I think as a Buddhist strap founder,
00:16:34
Neeraj Agarwal: because we are not funded, you always have to have
00:16:37
Neeraj Agarwal: a very solid financial knowledge of whatever you are doing, right.
00:16:43
Neeraj Agarwal: Like even if you are selling a product, you should
00:16:45
Neeraj Agarwal: always know the numbers on how you will be profitable.
00:16:48
Neeraj Agarwal: How you are going to do this business for a
00:16:51
Neeraj Agarwal: long term perspective,
00:16:52
Neeraj Agarwal: See, see, nowadays a lot of founders and I think
00:16:55
Neeraj Agarwal: a lot of people come with a vision that they
00:16:57
Neeraj Agarwal: want to make money as soon as possible, and that
00:17:00
Neeraj Agarwal: is their agenda for doing a lifetime deal. Yeah, In
00:17:04
Neeraj Agarwal: our case, the agenda was a little bit different where
00:17:06
Neeraj Agarwal: we thought that product will eventually get successful. We were
00:17:10
Neeraj Agarwal: sure about that. We just wanted to be,
00:17:13
Neeraj Agarwal: uh, in the mix. We are, we do not. We
00:17:16
Neeraj Agarwal: were not going in with the lifetime deal with that
00:17:19
Neeraj Agarwal: option that we want to sell 2000 copies in one day,
00:17:22
Neeraj Agarwal: and then we are closed the next week. We were
00:17:25
Neeraj Agarwal: going inside the lifetime market with the approach that even
00:17:28
Neeraj Agarwal: if we are do a 10 20 sales every day
00:17:32
Neeraj Agarwal: and that actually keeps on happening for a longer period
00:17:35
Neeraj Agarwal: of time, that then also it is a good thing.
00:17:38
Neeraj Agarwal: Integration space in itself is a very interesting space. Let
00:17:41
Neeraj Agarwal: me tell you why it is interesting and why you
00:17:44
Neeraj Agarwal: need a community of people or evangelists more than anything
00:17:47
Neeraj Agarwal: in any other industries. So, see, when you are building
00:17:52
Neeraj Agarwal: an automation product effectively, what you do is you connect
00:17:55
Neeraj Agarwal: to different platforms, right? Let me give you an example.
00:17:58
Neeraj Agarwal: You want to connect your Facebook leads that are coming
00:18:01
Neeraj Agarwal: in and you want to send it inside? Let's say
00:18:03
Neeraj Agarwal: sales force
00:18:06
Neeraj Agarwal: now, if you have a lot of evangelist that keeps
00:18:09
Neeraj Agarwal: on using your product, right?
00:18:12
Neeraj Agarwal: Even before you reach out to any platform for integration.
00:18:15
Neeraj Agarwal: Your evangelist might already be there and might already have
00:18:18
Neeraj Agarwal: asked an integration for them from them. Right? Right, Right.
00:18:22
Neeraj Agarwal: And when your evangelist have already reached a specific platform,
00:18:25
Neeraj Agarwal: then it actually helps you to get the integration done
00:18:28
Neeraj Agarwal: quite easily because the external person already knows you.
00:18:33
Neeraj Agarwal: And you are asking sometimes you are asking for private
00:18:36
Neeraj Agarwal: API s, right, Right? And those private API s are
00:18:39
Neeraj Agarwal: not accessible to just about anyone else, but only to
00:18:41
Neeraj Agarwal: the people who are popular. Right? So let me just
00:18:46
Neeraj Agarwal: give you example within our community. We actually have this
00:18:49
Neeraj Agarwal: integration of LinkedIn, right? So whenever there is any new,
00:18:52
Neeraj Agarwal: a lot of people run ads on LinkedIn, right? Yes.
00:18:56
Neeraj Agarwal: Whenever there is any new lead that
00:18:59
Neeraj Agarwal: come, send through an ad on LinkedIn, we have an
00:19:01
Neeraj Agarwal: integration for it. You can capture that LinkedIn lead, and
00:19:04
Neeraj Agarwal: you can send it that lead to Google sheet. Or
00:19:07
Neeraj Agarwal: maybe any of your c r m or whatever it is. Now,
00:19:10
Neeraj Agarwal: the interesting thing is LinkedIn lead ad. If you go
00:19:13
Neeraj Agarwal: out there. And if you ask for their API, they
00:19:15
Neeraj Agarwal: will deny that API right away. It will be very
00:19:18
Neeraj Agarwal: hard for you to get that API. And LinkedIn is
00:19:20
Saikat Pyne: generally very picky about or running automation on its platform.
00:19:23
Saikat Pyne: They are very sensitive about
00:19:25
Neeraj Agarwal: it.
00:19:25
Neeraj Agarwal: But actually, in our case, we had a customer from
00:19:28
Neeraj Agarwal: within our community who worked at Microsoft. And to be
00:19:32
Neeraj Agarwal: honest with you, once I wrote in a group that
00:19:34
Neeraj Agarwal: LinkedIn is denying the EPA access. And somehow, if anyone
00:19:37
Neeraj Agarwal: knows who can get this EPA access to us,
00:19:41
Neeraj Agarwal: would it be possible for anyone to do? And this
00:19:43
Neeraj Agarwal: person comes out. He tells me that he works at Microsoft.
00:19:47
Neeraj Agarwal: He is a project management product manager here, and he
00:19:50
Neeraj Agarwal: says that I will connect you to the relevant person
00:19:53
Neeraj Agarwal: within five days. We had an EPA for LinkedIn. Wow.
00:19:58
Neeraj Agarwal: And it is practically impossible to get it from where
00:20:01
Neeraj Agarwal: you generally are. So I know that is how it
00:20:03
Neeraj Agarwal: also it tells
00:20:04
Saikat Pyne: you about the power of the community to incrementally help
00:20:08
Saikat Pyne: improve the product. I'd want to go back to the
00:20:09
Saikat Pyne: pricing part. How did you look at the l TT
00:20:13
Saikat Pyne: customer
00:20:13
Saikat Pyne: versus the M R R customer. And how did you
00:20:16
Saikat Pyne: come up with the pricing for
00:20:17
Neeraj Agarwal: the L T D customer? I see. We wanted a
00:20:19
Neeraj Agarwal: lot of people to join the platform. In the initial days,
00:20:23
Neeraj Agarwal: we started with the pricing of to be honest with you,
00:20:26
Neeraj Agarwal: when we started, we it was even lesser than 1 49.
00:20:29
Neeraj Agarwal: Oh, is it?
00:20:30
Saikat Pyne: What was it? I'm curious
00:20:31
Neeraj Agarwal: to know. Yeah. So when we started, it was $79
00:20:36
Neeraj Agarwal: for a single code. So we actually had this system
00:20:38
Neeraj Agarwal: where we said that you can stack up the codes
00:20:41
Neeraj Agarwal: and as you stack up, you increase your task limit. Now,
00:20:45
Neeraj Agarwal: task limit within an integration software is if you're sending
00:20:48
Neeraj Agarwal: data from one software to another software, it consumes one task, right? Right.
00:20:54
Neeraj Agarwal: So in initial days, it was $79. But what we
00:20:57
Neeraj Agarwal: did is we built this principle of stacking where we
00:21:00
Neeraj Agarwal: said that if you are stacking 10 codes in total,
00:21:03
Neeraj Agarwal: you will be getting an access to a sub account
00:21:07
Neeraj Agarwal: feature where you can assign these tasks to some other
00:21:10
Neeraj Agarwal: accounts as well. There is a sort of agency licence
00:21:12
Neeraj Agarwal: that we started selling in the initial days, right? So
00:21:17
Neeraj Agarwal: one code was $79. And if someone 10 code, it
00:21:21
Neeraj Agarwal: becomes 7 $90
00:21:22
Neeraj Agarwal: right. And then we positioned it as a agency licence
00:21:26
Neeraj Agarwal: and it was an agency licence as well, where someone
00:21:29
Neeraj Agarwal: who invest 7 $90 in the initial days got an
00:21:33
Neeraj Agarwal: access to a certain number of tasks with a feature
00:21:36
Neeraj Agarwal: where they can assign those tasks to other accounts as well.
00:21:40
Neeraj Agarwal: Got it, Got it. And interestingly, see in L t. D.
00:21:43
Neeraj Agarwal: I think pricing matters a lot because it can actually
00:21:47
Neeraj Agarwal: make or break your initial
00:21:49
Neeraj Agarwal: investments. I feel that I had a person within the
00:21:53
Neeraj Agarwal: group itself who actually helped me build that pricing. When
00:21:57
Neeraj Agarwal: I launched an L t. D. I was not very
00:21:59
Neeraj Agarwal: expert in doing so. There was this person, even to
00:22:02
Neeraj Agarwal: be honest with you, I even didn't know the concept
00:22:05
Neeraj Agarwal: of stacking. OK, so this was this person. His name
00:22:09
Neeraj Agarwal: was Muhammad Ali. He also runs a deal site, by
00:22:12
Neeraj Agarwal: the way. But back in those days, he didn't had
00:22:15
Neeraj Agarwal: a deal site and he actually helped me in figuring
00:22:18
Neeraj Agarwal: out the pricing
00:22:19
Neeraj Agarwal: and and yeah, so that is how we started the ideal.
00:22:23
Neeraj Agarwal: See if someone is launching their own L t d.
00:22:26
Neeraj Agarwal: What I would say is See how much cost will
00:22:29
Neeraj Agarwal: be there for your software on a long run when
00:22:31
Neeraj Agarwal: you say long run tech
00:22:32
Saikat Pyne: generally lives in dog years. Right? G had a 1
00:22:36
Saikat Pyne: 41 50 year history. Yahoo had a 20 year history.
00:22:39
Saikat Pyne: How do you come up with that time
00:22:40
Neeraj Agarwal: period? You always have to see the biggest competitor in
00:22:43
Neeraj Agarwal: your space. For example, Zai launched in 2011,
00:22:48
Neeraj Agarwal: right? Right, And they were very much popular in 2020.
00:22:51
Neeraj Agarwal: So it's It was already a nine year journey back
00:22:54
Neeraj Agarwal: in those days. Now it is 2023. So imagine in
00:22:59
Neeraj Agarwal: 15 year journey that is already there, right?
00:23:02
Neeraj Agarwal: So when I say you should plan for a long
00:23:06
Neeraj Agarwal: year See, there are a lot of companies who come
00:23:09
Neeraj Agarwal: up with a lifetime offer because they just want to
00:23:11
Neeraj Agarwal: sell and run away. Yes, right, Yes. Now see, my
00:23:16
Neeraj Agarwal: intention and my suggestion is always built for long activity.
00:23:20
Neeraj Agarwal: So see, when I had a thought in mind that
00:23:23
Neeraj Agarwal: I always thought that we should be able to run
00:23:26
Neeraj Agarwal: our platform reliably, even if it did not have a
00:23:29
Neeraj Agarwal: single
00:23:30
Neeraj Agarwal: dollar earning after we launch our initial product for at
00:23:34
Neeraj Agarwal: least 10 years. OK, so 10
00:23:36
Saikat Pyne: years was the time period
00:23:37
Neeraj Agarwal: for you, Any about the ballpark time period that we
00:23:40
Neeraj Agarwal: determined that at least it should be running for 10 years.
00:23:44
Neeraj Agarwal: Even if you're selling a lifetime deal right, then if
00:23:47
Neeraj Agarwal: you have a very good funnel, if you have a
00:23:49
Neeraj Agarwal: very good systems, it can evolve in all the years.
00:23:53
Neeraj Agarwal: But at least 10 years was the ballpark figure that
00:23:55
Neeraj Agarwal: I will say you should be planning for. So consider
00:23:58
Neeraj Agarwal: the customer A. He will be using your software, how
00:24:01
Neeraj Agarwal: much resources he will be using and
00:24:05
Neeraj Agarwal: see. Server costs are always going down, so that is
00:24:08
Neeraj Agarwal: also to be taken in account and then see extrapolate
00:24:12
Neeraj Agarwal: it to for 10 years and see how much you
00:24:14
Neeraj Agarwal: will be spending in the 10 year period. One more
00:24:16
Neeraj Agarwal: thing that involves with the software on Lifetime is the
00:24:19
Neeraj Agarwal: support
00:24:20
Neeraj Agarwal: right? Right now, support is a human resource that is
00:24:24
Neeraj Agarwal: always on a increasing trajectory. Right, So it right, this
00:24:28
Neeraj Agarwal: isn't cost in our case. So because we knew that
00:24:30
Neeraj Agarwal: the support cost is always going to be on the
00:24:32
Neeraj Agarwal: increasing trajectory. We always said that even though we are
00:24:36
Neeraj Agarwal: giving you the software out there, but the software support
00:24:41
Neeraj Agarwal: will be limited for one year. Yes, right. So
00:24:44
Saikat Pyne: even with the top most L T. D. It is
00:24:46
Saikat Pyne: capped at one
00:24:47
Neeraj Agarwal: year.
00:24:48
Neeraj Agarwal: See on the lower end. On the higher end, it
00:24:51
Neeraj Agarwal: is all capped at one year. Yes, because
00:24:54
Neeraj Agarwal: support cost is always rises. It is on the increasing
00:24:57
Neeraj Agarwal: trajectory and you do not want people to be supporting
00:25:02
Neeraj Agarwal: on a lifetime basis because it becomes a very big
00:25:05
Neeraj Agarwal: hassle in itself. Because let's say if you are selling
00:25:07
Neeraj Agarwal: 5000 licences in a given year and next year, also
00:25:11
Neeraj Agarwal: 5000 people joins in and subsequently it starts compounding
00:25:15
Neeraj Agarwal: right and then your problems are even bigger because it
00:25:18
Neeraj Agarwal: is not the server that you can just expand and
00:25:20
Neeraj Agarwal: it will expand your capacity. It is the human resource capacity,
00:25:23
Neeraj Agarwal: which is in fact, a tough thing to scale. So
00:25:27
Neeraj Agarwal: the support was on for one year. But we always
00:25:29
Neeraj Agarwal: said that the software is something that you can use
00:25:31
Neeraj Agarwal: for lifetime, and it is something that we are doing
00:25:33
Neeraj Agarwal: as well. But see, when you are plugging out the
00:25:36
Neeraj Agarwal: support from the software, there has to be something that
00:25:40
Neeraj Agarwal: needs to be given in so that the people can
00:25:43
Neeraj Agarwal: manage the entire thing themselves.
00:25:45
Neeraj Agarwal: And that is when we thought that even people want
00:25:48
Neeraj Agarwal: to get the support even we are not giving them
00:25:50
Neeraj Agarwal: the support and how they will support themselves. So we
00:25:53
Neeraj Agarwal: started building a lot of video tutorials on just about
00:25:57
Neeraj Agarwal: every possible use case. So if someone wants to transfer,
00:26:01
Neeraj Agarwal: Facebook leads to Google Sheets. We have a video for that.
00:26:05
Neeraj Agarwal: If someone wants to automatically reply on Google reviews, we
00:26:10
Neeraj Agarwal: have a video for that.
00:26:11
Neeraj Agarwal: So if you go to YouTube and if you search
00:26:14
Neeraj Agarwal: for on YouTube, you will find out that we have
00:26:17
Neeraj Agarwal: done more than 4000 plus and they are not automated
00:26:20
Neeraj Agarwal: videos of some kind. They are step by step videos,
00:26:23
Neeraj Agarwal: each video created by a person who understood that use
00:26:27
Neeraj Agarwal: case and then built the video
00:26:29
Neeraj Agarwal: right. So I think on an education front, I think
00:26:33
Neeraj Agarwal: the number of videos that we have done is not
00:26:34
Neeraj Agarwal: done by anyone else. How
00:26:36
Saikat Pyne: is the LP D customer different from an M R
00:26:39
Saikat Pyne: R customer currently on public or public
00:26:42
Neeraj Agarwal: connect. See, the interesting thing is, we
00:26:45
Neeraj Agarwal: we always build the L T. D. Business in a
00:26:46
Neeraj Agarwal: way where we give people an option that they can
00:26:49
Neeraj Agarwal: get up to 10 tasks every month. Yes, right. And
00:26:53
Neeraj Agarwal: that was on lifetime, right? Right. So someone can invest
00:26:57
Neeraj Agarwal: a certain dollars and they will get a 10 task
00:26:59
Neeraj Agarwal: for Lifetime.
00:27:00
Neeraj Agarwal: Now, interestingly, 80% of the consumers who reach never have
00:27:05
Neeraj Agarwal: to upgrade beyond the 10 task limit. Because the way
00:27:08
Neeraj Agarwal: we count task is also very generous compared to other
00:27:12
Neeraj Agarwal: platforms like and other platforms. It is a very generous
00:27:16
Neeraj Agarwal: counting system which allows people to scale up, uh, and
00:27:20
Neeraj Agarwal: effectively more than 80%. People never have to upgrade to
00:27:24
Neeraj Agarwal: a higher plans,
00:27:26
Neeraj Agarwal: right? But the interesting thing is, we always wanted our
00:27:29
Neeraj Agarwal: entire ecosystem to be sustainable as well beyond the lifetime
00:27:32
Neeraj Agarwal: deals as well. So what we did is we said
00:27:34
Neeraj Agarwal: that even if you need
00:27:37
Neeraj Agarwal: tasks beyond the 10 task limit, you have a choice
00:27:41
Neeraj Agarwal: to upgrade your account where you can add more tasks
00:27:44
Neeraj Agarwal: on top of your lifetime. task so you can basically
00:27:47
Neeraj Agarwal: bundle a recurring subscription on top of your lifetime 10
00:27:51
Neeraj Agarwal: task limit per month.
00:27:53
Neeraj Agarwal: Right? And those are the 20% of the people who
00:27:56
Neeraj Agarwal: pay monthly. Also see One mistake I see a lot
00:27:59
Neeraj Agarwal: of lifetime founders make is when someone is selling a
00:28:02
Neeraj Agarwal: lifetime of their product. What they essentially do is they
00:28:05
Neeraj Agarwal: go to their monthly pricing
00:28:07
Neeraj Agarwal: and they increase the pricing manifold, so you will always
00:28:10
Neeraj Agarwal: find this on different platforms. What they do is they
00:28:13
Neeraj Agarwal: increase their monthly pricing to $99 per month, and while
00:28:17
Neeraj Agarwal: doing that, they say that it is $99 per month
00:28:20
Neeraj Agarwal: and I'm giving you a lifetime deal for 1 $49
00:28:23
Neeraj Agarwal: dollars only. But I think that is a stupid mistake
00:28:26
Neeraj Agarwal: that a lot of founders make. See, When we launched
00:28:28
Neeraj Agarwal: our L. T. D. We always kept a monthly option, which,
00:28:31
Neeraj Agarwal: which is a very balanced option between a monthly and
00:28:35
Neeraj Agarwal: a life,
00:28:36
Neeraj Agarwal: right, right, So there are two always two category of people.
00:28:40
Neeraj Agarwal: Some people want to invest once, and they do not
00:28:43
Neeraj Agarwal: want to invest any more. They can pick up, and
00:28:46
Neeraj Agarwal: they come up in the lifetime deals Bucket. There was
00:28:49
Neeraj Agarwal: 3rd 2nd category of customers who just want to start
00:28:53
Neeraj Agarwal: their journey on an incremental basis, and they are very
00:28:56
Neeraj Agarwal: happy paying money. So when we sold our lifetime deal,
00:28:59
Neeraj Agarwal: our monthly was just $19 per month.
00:29:02
Neeraj Agarwal: So imagine our lifetime deal at 6 $99 pay once
00:29:07
Neeraj Agarwal: for 10 task versus a $19 per month option
00:29:12
Neeraj Agarwal: for 10 task, right? Right now we balanced it in
00:29:18
Neeraj Agarwal: a way where person can person has complete freedom, it can.
00:29:22
Neeraj Agarwal: He can get a $19 per month plan, or he
00:29:25
Neeraj Agarwal: can get a 6 $99 per month Uh, 6 $99.01
00:29:28
Neeraj Agarwal: time plan.
00:29:30
Neeraj Agarwal: And that balancing actually helped where a certain number of
00:29:34
Neeraj Agarwal: people were picking lifetime and a certain number of people
00:29:37
Neeraj Agarwal: were picking monthly. And that actually helped us build a good,
00:29:42
Neeraj Agarwal: sustainable model where people, depending upon their profile, can choose
00:29:48
Neeraj Agarwal: a variant of product that works forgot. My only advice
00:29:51
Neeraj Agarwal: is not to creep your life a monthly pricing too
00:29:55
Neeraj Agarwal: high just to sell your L T D. But build
00:29:57
Neeraj Agarwal: a sustainable model where you can tap into the two
00:30:01
Neeraj Agarwal: different customer profiles right away at the same point of time.
00:30:04
Neeraj Agarwal: Absolutely.
00:30:05
Saikat Pyne: Have you ever worried that your attractive M R R
00:30:09
Saikat Pyne: pricing might scrape customers away from your
00:30:12
Neeraj Agarwal: L T. D? See? There are always different categories of customers.
00:30:16
Neeraj Agarwal: Let me tell you, let me give you an example
00:30:18
Neeraj Agarwal: within my family my dad used. That is someone who
00:30:21
Neeraj Agarwal: actually gets all the Softwares out there. I don't know why. Yeah,
00:30:25
Neeraj Agarwal: so for him, he always says
00:30:29
Neeraj Agarwal: that he wants to get a lifetime of the product
00:30:31
Neeraj Agarwal: because he is a pay once and use lifetime kind
00:30:34
Neeraj Agarwal: of guy. There is another category of customers who want
00:30:38
Neeraj Agarwal: to pay month as long as you're balancing those things out.
00:30:41
Neeraj Agarwal: We didn't worry about whether someone is getting monthly or
00:30:44
Neeraj Agarwal: whether someone is getting yearly or whether someone is getting
00:30:48
Neeraj Agarwal: a one time product, because, see,
00:30:50
Neeraj Agarwal: if you have a shorter vision, then you want to
00:30:54
Neeraj Agarwal: decide on a lot of things. But when you have
00:30:57
Neeraj Agarwal: a longer vision of doing things, even if someone is
00:31:00
Neeraj Agarwal: not paying you 6 99 on day one, you know
00:31:02
Neeraj Agarwal: that eventually in 34 years they will eventually. We didn't
00:31:05
Neeraj Agarwal: we were not very worried about whether someone
00:31:08
Neeraj Agarwal: will take monthly over time on that contact. Got it?
00:31:11
Neeraj Agarwal: What
00:31:12
Saikat Pyne: is the bigger percentage of users currently in terms of?
00:31:16
Saikat Pyne: Are there more sort of these professionals who run their
00:31:20
Saikat Pyne: businesses with? And they are then also subscribing to their
00:31:25
Saikat Pyne: or is M R R. Then
00:31:27
Saikat Pyne: a higher percentage of people using their land potentially new
00:31:31
Neeraj Agarwal: be higher percentages? Are the people who are opting for
00:31:34
Neeraj Agarwal: m r R See. There is one interesting thing that
00:31:36
Neeraj Agarwal: I have learned while selling while balancing M r R
00:31:40
Neeraj Agarwal: and L T D thing.
00:31:41
Neeraj Agarwal: The thing is, see, different geographies have different paying capacities
00:31:45
Neeraj Agarwal: as well. Absolutely. When we see our lifetime deal selling
00:31:49
Neeraj Agarwal: happening a lot of people who are outside India region
00:31:53
Neeraj Agarwal: they prefer getting an L T. D. Because the economy
00:31:56
Neeraj Agarwal: is something where people can afford a bigger price on
00:31:59
Neeraj Agarwal: day one. What when we see in India, a lot
00:32:02
Neeraj Agarwal: of people start their journey by paying a small amount
00:32:05
Neeraj Agarwal: right, and also I noticed one more thing. Earlier on
00:32:09
Neeraj Agarwal: our platform, we had all the pricing written as dollar
00:32:13
Neeraj Agarwal: 19 and things like that, everything was in dollars. We
00:32:16
Neeraj Agarwal: didn't even have a way to way for the people
00:32:19
Neeraj Agarwal: to buy the product using things like U P I
00:32:21
Neeraj Agarwal: or something, right? Right. Even if you're a founder, a
00:32:24
Neeraj Agarwal: lot of founders are there. Even I was on the
00:32:26
Neeraj Agarwal: very similar journey where I always thought that a stripe
00:32:29
Neeraj Agarwal: is the way to go.
00:32:31
Neeraj Agarwal: Yes, but the interesting thing is, if you are selling
00:32:33
Neeraj Agarwal: in India and if you also think you might have
00:32:37
Neeraj Agarwal: a which actually is a good perspective now, considering a
00:32:40
Neeraj Agarwal: lot of people are now selling in India and now
00:32:43
Neeraj Agarwal: people are buying in India as well. So recently we
00:32:46
Neeraj Agarwal: started offering U P I with I N r payment
00:32:49
Neeraj Agarwal: options and that actually worked really well for us as well.
00:32:54
Neeraj Agarwal: So that is one take away someone can take from
00:32:58
Saikat Pyne: this in terms of a customer base. What percentage is
00:33:01
Saikat Pyne: currently from India? And what percentage is global?
00:33:03
Neeraj Agarwal: Let's say see, I think 15% should be Indians. I
00:33:07
Neeraj Agarwal: like more than that, but yeah, 15%. But it never
00:33:10
Neeraj Agarwal: used to be 15%. It used to be 12% earlier.
00:33:13
Neeraj Agarwal: I'm sure
00:33:13
Saikat Pyne: because I think there is always this perception and as
00:33:16
Saikat Pyne: a millennial yourself needed I think you will agree. While
00:33:19
Saikat Pyne: growing up, paying for software was never in an Indian's DNA.
00:33:25
Saikat Pyne: It's a very suspect thing to say on a YouTube
00:33:28
Saikat Pyne: channel or on a broadcast. But the fundamental DNA of
00:33:31
Saikat Pyne: an Indian millennial Or I am sure even our Pakistani
00:33:34
Saikat Pyne: listeners are Bangladeshi listeners, as Sri Lankan listeners will agree.
00:33:39
Saikat Pyne: In the emerging world, paying for software was a luxury
00:33:43
Saikat Pyne: that only select enterprises could afford. Have you ever paid
00:33:46
Saikat Pyne: an influencer, or have you ever struck a creator partnership?
00:33:51
Neeraj Agarwal: See, we haven't done any influencer marketing per se.
00:33:55
Neeraj Agarwal: Uh, I won't say it is a bad thing to do,
00:33:57
Neeraj Agarwal: just in case. If you can do that, please do that,
00:34:00
Neeraj Agarwal: because I think it is also a very nice ecosystem
00:34:03
Neeraj Agarwal: of having influencers at your end who speak about your product.
00:34:06
Neeraj Agarwal: But in our case, see, a lot of things happened
00:34:09
Neeraj Agarwal: because of the community that we were running
00:34:12
Neeraj Agarwal: right. See when you share your journey, whatever is happening
00:34:15
Neeraj Agarwal: inside your journey, your failures, your successes, a lot of
00:34:20
Neeraj Agarwal: people along the way get connected for a video. So
00:34:22
Neeraj Agarwal: just to give you in context, we were running Facebook
00:34:25
Neeraj Agarwal: ads in our initial days, and somehow I shared in
00:34:29
Neeraj Agarwal: the Facebook community that this is the number of this
00:34:32
Neeraj Agarwal: is the amount of money that I spent today.
00:34:35
Neeraj Agarwal: I think that it was $1000 or something that we
00:34:37
Neeraj Agarwal: spent on an ad for a specific day, and I
00:34:40
Neeraj Agarwal: said that I probably lost everything that I ran the
00:34:42
Neeraj Agarwal: ads for right And to be honest with you after
00:34:47
Neeraj Agarwal: I did that, see, people
00:34:49
Neeraj Agarwal: are more connected by your vulnerabilities than your successes. Absolutely.
00:34:54
Saikat Pyne: People relate more with your with your losses than your
00:34:57
Neeraj Agarwal: success and see if you go out there, you will
00:35:00
Neeraj Agarwal: always find more people talking about how they are building
00:35:04
Neeraj Agarwal: their big office, how they are doing their big thing
00:35:06
Neeraj Agarwal: and how they are doing
00:35:08
Neeraj Agarwal: X y Z Z thing. But very few people talk
00:35:10
Neeraj Agarwal: about the challenges that are happening in your life while
00:35:14
Neeraj Agarwal: building the very same thing. So I think, see, while
00:35:17
Neeraj Agarwal: doing that, a lot of community members got connected with me.
00:35:20
Neeraj Agarwal: I told everyone that I am trying to build a
00:35:22
Neeraj Agarwal: solution which I am trying to,
00:35:25
Neeraj Agarwal: with which I am trying to compete with Zaire and
00:35:28
Neeraj Agarwal: whatever challenges I had during the building of the platform.
00:35:32
Neeraj Agarwal: I just started posting about it. Community is a group
00:35:36
Neeraj Agarwal: of people with common intention at a one place
00:35:40
Neeraj Agarwal: right or a lot of people want to learn automation.
00:35:44
Neeraj Agarwal: And a lot of people also want to understand how
00:35:48
Neeraj Agarwal: to run their business efficient. And those are the type
00:35:50
Neeraj Agarwal: of people who join the public community.
00:35:53
Neeraj Agarwal: And the reason for joining the public community happened from
00:35:57
Neeraj Agarwal: for a lot of reasons. For example, someone got a
00:36:00
Neeraj Agarwal: reference from someone telling someone that this is a useful
00:36:04
Neeraj Agarwal: community and you can join and see we when we
00:36:07
Neeraj Agarwal: started with a small community of, I think, 405 100 members. Um,
00:36:12
Neeraj Agarwal: now we have around 14 members. The interesting thing is,
00:36:16
Neeraj Agarwal: the interesting thing is,
00:36:18
Neeraj Agarwal: not all the members are active all the time, but yeah,
00:36:23
Neeraj Agarwal: but you got to do what you gotta do, right?
00:36:25
Neeraj Agarwal: You just
00:36:27
Neeraj Agarwal: yeah, you have to keep on posting things. You just
00:36:29
Neeraj Agarwal: tell what you are doing. You just share whatever interesting
00:36:33
Neeraj Agarwal: use cases you find.
00:36:35
Neeraj Agarwal: And in our case, that actually helped us tremendously, considering
00:36:40
Neeraj Agarwal: just about everyone in the group somehow is our customer,
00:36:44
Neeraj Agarwal: I think, and and yeah, and yeah. So that is
00:36:48
Neeraj Agarwal: how it is. What does
00:36:49
Saikat Pyne: the current marketing
00:36:50
Neeraj Agarwal: mix look like for you? We do not go out
00:36:53
Neeraj Agarwal: there with the mindset that we want to do a
00:36:55
Neeraj Agarwal: lot of things in 20 different channels. So we have zero.
00:36:58
Neeraj Agarwal: We have zero down on 34 channels. One of the
00:37:02
Neeraj Agarwal: channels that we are investing money is Facebook ads.
00:37:05
Neeraj Agarwal: Uh, a lot of people have told me that we
00:37:08
Neeraj Agarwal: should be investing money on tiktok ads or probably YouTube
00:37:12
Neeraj Agarwal: ads and things like that. But see, when it comes
00:37:14
Neeraj Agarwal: to ads, we just want to focus on Facebook, right?
00:37:18
Neeraj Agarwal: So because that is the platform we understand that is
00:37:20
Neeraj Agarwal: the platform where we also run our community. So we
00:37:23
Neeraj Agarwal: are just focused on the free ads right now. So
00:37:26
Neeraj Agarwal: that is one channel that we are doing and exploring,
00:37:29
Neeraj Agarwal: and it still doing advertising on a daily basis on
00:37:31
Neeraj Agarwal: that channel.
00:37:33
Neeraj Agarwal: The second channel that we are investing. I don't say
00:37:35
Neeraj Agarwal: we are investing money on that channel, but that channel
00:37:37
Neeraj Agarwal: has helped us a lot, which is a Facebook group itself.
00:37:40
Neeraj Agarwal: The third thing that we are doing is we are
00:37:42
Neeraj Agarwal: just creating too many videos. But the reason for creating
00:37:44
Neeraj Agarwal: too many videos also comes from our DNA of magnet brains,
00:37:48
Neeraj Agarwal: where we have done 36 videos for school students, right?
00:37:53
Neeraj Agarwal: And
00:37:54
Neeraj Agarwal: because we have a lot of studios in our office,
00:37:57
Neeraj Agarwal: we have a very set up infrastructure for creating videos. See,
00:38:01
Neeraj Agarwal: you should always play by your strength. I won't say
00:38:04
Neeraj Agarwal: it Pick a channel just because someone else is picking
00:38:06
Neeraj Agarwal: a specific channel, Right? If I say pick up, I
00:38:09
Neeraj Agarwal: pick the video. It doesn't make sense for you to
00:38:12
Neeraj Agarwal: pick up a video just because I said so. You
00:38:15
Neeraj Agarwal: should figure out what is the critical channel or what
00:38:18
Neeraj Agarwal: is the strength? What is your strength for connected to
00:38:21
Neeraj Agarwal: any specific channel, right?
00:38:23
Neeraj Agarwal: If you have a specific strength with any specific channel,
00:38:27
Neeraj Agarwal: you should leverage that in our case because we had
00:38:29
Neeraj Agarwal: our past DNA with creating videos for school students and
00:38:35
Neeraj Agarwal: we were doing it at a scale we thought, Why not?
00:38:37
Neeraj Agarwal: We replicate the very same essence for public connected cell
00:38:41
Neeraj Agarwal: and let's see how it works out right? See, nowadays,
00:38:45
Neeraj Agarwal: marketing is not something where you can say that this
00:38:49
Neeraj Agarwal: specific thing is connected to this thing. And if you
00:38:51
Neeraj Agarwal: do this thing, you will find success
00:38:53
Neeraj Agarwal: right? In our case, people find out about our product
00:38:57
Neeraj Agarwal: through probably a YouTube channel video or probably a Facebook ad,
00:39:02
Neeraj Agarwal: or probably through someone who talks the lifetime deal or
00:39:05
Neeraj Agarwal: something like that, and they just go out there. They explode.
00:39:07
Neeraj Agarwal: They find out secret crossing happens across the channels,
00:39:12
Neeraj Agarwal: right? Absolutely. I think there's some marketing
00:39:14
Saikat Pyne: research that a customer has to have some interaction with
00:39:17
Saikat Pyne: you
00:39:17
Neeraj Agarwal: at around 10 points before that customer potentially
00:39:20
Saikat Pyne: decides to make the
00:39:21
Neeraj Agarwal: purchase. What in your mind
00:39:23
Saikat Pyne: is the rule of the Facebook ad versus the rule
00:39:26
Saikat Pyne: of the
00:39:26
Neeraj Agarwal: crazy amount of that? You put it out. If you
00:39:28
Neeraj Agarwal: go out there, you just share the link right of
00:39:30
Neeraj Agarwal: your YouTube channel.
00:39:32
Neeraj Agarwal: And when someone goes on to the YouTube channel, they
00:39:34
Neeraj Agarwal: see they see the 4000 videos that are created. Now
00:39:39
Neeraj Agarwal: they get a feeling that it is not something which
00:39:40
Neeraj Agarwal: is done by a very small company who are just
00:39:43
Neeraj Agarwal: so I think, then eventually what they do is they
00:39:46
Neeraj Agarwal: also join the Facebook community. When they join the Facebook community,
00:39:50
Neeraj Agarwal: they figure out that he it has 14 members. The
00:39:53
Neeraj Agarwal: discussions are very active. There are some people who are
00:39:56
Neeraj Agarwal: active who have months or something.
00:39:59
Neeraj Agarwal: So they have been active for 14 months, 15 months,
00:40:01
Neeraj Agarwal: 16 months, then the essence of the product that hey,
00:40:04
Neeraj Agarwal: it is something which can be useful for us
00:40:08
Neeraj Agarwal: because nowadays people can invest the money. But they do
00:40:12
Neeraj Agarwal: not want the pain that they set up their systems
00:40:14
Neeraj Agarwal: on one platform and six months down the line. That
00:40:18
Neeraj Agarwal: platform is going away and they have everything on the
00:40:22
Neeraj Agarwal: different platform altogether again. So that is not the pain
00:40:25
Neeraj Agarwal: that anyone wants to be up
00:40:31
Neeraj Agarwal: naturally. And then
00:40:32
Saikat Pyne: if it is something like automation, which is potentially running
00:40:38
Saikat Pyne: important business processes for you, imagine the pain. Then the
00:40:41
Saikat Pyne: company runs away. Then your business is it will
00:40:45
Neeraj Agarwal: stop on its tracks, right? Do you? Do you run
00:40:48
Neeraj Agarwal: an affiliate programme? Whoever promotes our lifetime deal, we pay
00:40:52
Neeraj Agarwal: them 20% commission because it is one time and for
00:40:55
Neeraj Agarwal: recurring product,
00:40:56
Neeraj Agarwal: they get 30% recurring commission over the lifetime subscription. It
00:41:00
Neeraj Agarwal: is not just the one year or two years and
00:41:02
Neeraj Agarwal: then the customer belongs to us. It is that customer
00:41:05
Neeraj Agarwal: always belongs to you. And I'm guessing
00:41:07
Saikat Pyne: a lot of the traction from the affiliate programme would
00:41:12
Saikat Pyne: be from
00:41:12
Neeraj Agarwal: your existing community because I do not tell anyone that
00:41:15
Neeraj Agarwal: join my affiliate programme or do this or do that
00:41:18
Neeraj Agarwal: once in a while. I think I just mentioned it
00:41:20
Neeraj Agarwal: once in a year thing and I just mentioned that Hey,
00:41:23
Neeraj Agarwal: this is the amount
00:41:25
Neeraj Agarwal: and I think that generates and picks up the interest
00:41:28
Neeraj Agarwal: of the audience. And then they ask about what is
00:41:31
Neeraj Agarwal: an affiliate programme? How does it work out? And then
00:41:33
Neeraj Agarwal: you just send them to a dedicated affiliate page. We
00:41:36
Neeraj Agarwal: are doing right a lot of people because they are
00:41:39
Neeraj Agarwal: comfortable with the product. See, affiliates nowadays also want to
00:41:43
Neeraj Agarwal: promote products that are very reliable at the same point
00:41:47
Neeraj Agarwal: of time. They want to promote a product where they
00:41:50
Neeraj Agarwal: have a chance of earning good money as well.
00:41:52
Neeraj Agarwal: Right? So let's imagine if you are selling a $700 product.
00:41:56
Neeraj Agarwal: So it is a 6 $90 product and that effectively
00:41:59
Neeraj Agarwal: percent commission so effectively for a single sale, it actually
00:42:03
Neeraj Agarwal: a good sale. You get 1 $40 or something,
00:42:07
Neeraj Agarwal: right? So 1 $40 an amount of money on day
00:42:11
Neeraj Agarwal: one for just
00:42:13
Neeraj Agarwal: And you do not have to that that the product
00:42:16
Neeraj Agarwal: is a stable. I'll just promote it. Just like that.
00:42:23
Neeraj Agarwal: Got it. We
00:42:24
Saikat Pyne: are coming to the fag end of the interview. I'm
00:42:26
Saikat Pyne: really enjoying this conversation in English. I don't
00:42:28
Neeraj Agarwal: want it to end, but the two questions, then, is
00:42:31
Neeraj Agarwal: like
00:42:31
Saikat Pyne: you're at different time. Number one is
00:42:34
Neeraj Agarwal: when family ever find, uh, to be honest with you see,
00:42:37
Neeraj Agarwal: a lot of things depend upon how things pan out
00:42:41
Neeraj Agarwal: in future, But honestly, they actually have a interesting conversations
00:42:45
Neeraj Agarwal: with almost
00:42:46
Neeraj Agarwal: a lot of founders. Honestly, just because we have an
00:42:49
Neeraj Agarwal: integration platform, I always get chance to connect with Founders Direct. Right?
00:42:54
Neeraj Agarwal: I was talking on a call with the founder of
00:42:57
Neeraj Agarwal: So what actually raised $32 million recently. So I was
00:43:01
Neeraj Agarwal: talking to the founder of VAT. I asked him like
00:43:04
Neeraj Agarwal: how you are going to spend the money, that you
00:43:06
Neeraj Agarwal: are fundraising right? Because the one of the questions, one
00:43:10
Neeraj Agarwal: of the fundamental questions, is let's say if you are fundraising,
00:43:13
Neeraj Agarwal: you should be
00:43:14
Neeraj Agarwal: aware about what you're going to do with that money
00:43:18
Neeraj Agarwal: once you fundraise,
00:43:20
Neeraj Agarwal: right? So I think see, that is the question that
00:43:23
Neeraj Agarwal: I do not have an answer yet, considering we are
00:43:26
Neeraj Agarwal: still in the evolution phase. We are. We have money
00:43:33
Neeraj Agarwal: that can run public connect for quite some time. So
00:43:37
Neeraj Agarwal: even if we take that, whether we want to fundraise
00:43:39
Neeraj Agarwal: or not, we have to do a unconscious decision because
00:43:42
Neeraj Agarwal: the thing is, let's say, if you we are running
00:43:44
Neeraj Agarwal: for rats,
00:43:45
Neeraj Agarwal: uh, we spend quite substantially on Facebook ads, you see.
00:43:48
Neeraj Agarwal: Currently we are profitable and we are spending the same
00:43:51
Neeraj Agarwal: amount of money that are funded. Companies also invest on
00:43:54
Neeraj Agarwal: Facebook ads and things like that.
00:43:58
Neeraj Agarwal: Now, if you raise a fund and if you have
00:44:01
Neeraj Agarwal: an access fund and let's say if you want to
00:44:02
Neeraj Agarwal: invest on marketing
00:44:04
Neeraj Agarwal: right, either you will have to figure out new channels
00:44:07
Neeraj Agarwal: or you will have to put the same money in
00:44:09
Neeraj Agarwal: the same channel. Now every channel has a limit of
00:44:12
Neeraj Agarwal: itself before it starts to give lesser and right, So see,
00:44:17
Neeraj Agarwal: I think I haven't made a conscious decision of whether
00:44:20
Neeraj Agarwal: we want to not want to find out, but I
00:44:21
Neeraj Agarwal: think a trajectory will be much more clear. If you
00:44:24
Neeraj Agarwal: ask me the very same question down the line. Let's
00:44:26
Neeraj Agarwal: do another
00:44:27
Saikat Pyne: interview. And another 10. What
00:44:29
Neeraj Agarwal: does the back end for public
00:44:30
Neeraj Agarwal: correct look like?
00:44:31
Saikat Pyne: Where is your marketing website
00:44:33
Neeraj Agarwal: hosted Because my team was comfortable with WordPress. We use
00:44:37
Neeraj Agarwal: the Element. Elementary is quite popular on that commonly used Well,
00:44:41
Neeraj Agarwal: we actually hosted our entire WORDPRESS website on a different
00:44:44
Neeraj Agarwal: server altogether because wordpress websites get hacked. All so what
00:44:48
Neeraj Agarwal: we did is the only concern about WordPress is hacking.
00:44:51
Neeraj Agarwal: So what we did is created a different server altogether
00:44:55
Neeraj Agarwal: for WORDPRESS website.
00:44:57
Neeraj Agarwal: We hosted it an elementary. We use very minimal amount
00:45:02
Neeraj Agarwal: of plugins on that WordPress website because you never know
00:45:05
Neeraj Agarwal: the loophole everything and the landing page for public and
00:45:09
Neeraj Agarwal: connect the entire the application. As far as the application
00:45:12
Neeraj Agarwal: is concerned, it is things. So we actually build them
00:45:15
Neeraj Agarwal: in a modular way. For example, we have it architecture
00:45:18
Neeraj Agarwal: for logging and sign ups and everything. The logging signups
00:45:22
Neeraj Agarwal: architecture is built on G s and the user database
00:45:26
Neeraj Agarwal: and our
00:45:27
Neeraj Agarwal: the application specific application connect it on P h. P
00:45:31
Neeraj Agarwal: I know P h p is relatively old. When we
00:45:35
Neeraj Agarwal: were building the platform, we wanted to build on a
00:45:37
Neeraj Agarwal: solution that we have experience of working, Uh, on that
00:45:41
Neeraj Agarwal: eight years. So it was a technology that we understood
00:45:44
Neeraj Agarwal: very clearly we used We knew the small things that
00:45:48
Neeraj Agarwal: a general person do not know, right? So we built
00:45:51
Neeraj Agarwal: our application on P H. P. We use my SQL
00:45:55
Neeraj Agarwal: back end
00:45:56
Neeraj Agarwal: in public connect. We have a lot of internal model, uh,
00:45:59
Neeraj Agarwal: that are built on node J s. They are hosted
00:46:01
Neeraj Agarwal: on Amazon Lambda, which so a couple of things all
00:46:05
Neeraj Agarwal: couple on AWS runs public connect. Right.
00:46:10
Neeraj Agarwal: Lovely.
00:46:11
Saikat Pyne: And my last question, you have built a
00:46:14
Neeraj Agarwal: suite of products, right? And
00:46:16
Saikat Pyne: in each of the segments that some of these products
00:46:19
Saikat Pyne: operate in there is the
00:46:21
Neeraj Agarwal: £10 gorilla, right? What's the vision with family? Even if
00:46:25
Neeraj Agarwal: you see some bigger platforms out there nowadays are a
00:46:28
Neeraj Agarwal: multi product company, right? Even if you go to even
00:46:32
Neeraj Agarwal: if you razor a knows the razor pay by their payment,
00:46:35
Neeraj Agarwal: take away right.
00:46:37
Neeraj Agarwal: But if you look deeply, you like, they also have
00:46:39
Neeraj Agarwal: a Nowadays, we have p x where they do everything.
00:46:44
Neeraj Agarwal: Similarly, if you go to zoo out there, their most
00:46:47
Neeraj Agarwal: popular product on zoo because I have been advanced, I
00:46:50
Neeraj Agarwal: have seen the zoo team very closely. Their most popular
00:46:53
Neeraj Agarwal: product is Zou C. R M, right. And I think
00:46:57
Neeraj Agarwal: 70 80% of the people use Z C R M.
00:47:00
Neeraj Agarwal: But still, there is a ecosystem options that are
00:47:03
Neeraj Agarwal: that are being used and because you have an ecosystem
00:47:06
Neeraj Agarwal: of pro customers coming on a single product, eventually they
00:47:10
Neeraj Agarwal: as well. So in our case, I think a connected
00:47:14
Neeraj Agarwal: is our leadership product, I should say, and the other
00:47:18
Neeraj Agarwal: products are something which people need for their specific requirement.
00:47:24
Neeraj Agarwal: See, we do not aggressively compete on forms with that.
00:47:28
Neeraj Agarwal: We are competing with this company or that company. But
00:47:32
Neeraj Agarwal: once the customer is within your ecosystem, they are more
00:47:36
Neeraj Agarwal: likely to use your other products within that ecosystem rather
00:47:41
Neeraj Agarwal: than trying to opt out for a different solution altogether. Yeah,
00:47:45
Neeraj Agarwal: so we are. So our vision with was to build
00:47:48
Neeraj Agarwal: an ecosystem of there's always one single leader, most of your,
00:47:54
Neeraj Agarwal: but then you have a nice funnel with all your products,
00:47:57
Neeraj Agarwal: and eventually you build a successful business out of it.
00:48:05
Neeraj Agarwal: Lovely. And
00:48:06
Saikat Pyne: on that optimistic note guy is Sarah. Thank you so
00:48:10
Saikat Pyne: much for being on the show. Nira. It's really, really appreciated.
00:48:13
Saikat Pyne: You taking time out.