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From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

blog.kookoo.in

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Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#11

Post by kartikkumar »

Awesome! Really great work and it's great to see more success stories from the Indian startup scene. It's particularly heartening that a bootstrapped company can get there. I was working on trying to lay the groundwork for startup in Bangalore last year and was told by many people that I'd fail for the simple reason that government regulation would kill me. There are in fact two spaces that I've been wanting to enter into India: space and education.

On the back of your experiences, I think I feel that maybe I shouldn't feel as discouraged.

Would love to hear more about your journey and the problems you conquered.

Good luck going international!

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#12

Post by nutanc »

_s wrote: post #10
nutanc wrote: post #2

Thanks for posting this. This is Chaitanya from Ozonetel. I can take questions about our journey so far

As someone who doesn't know much about that region - how prevalent / accessible is the internet? I hear from friends that are from India / Pakistan of slow internet speeds, access limitations and general bandwidth restrictions - I assume this also plays a part in how big your target audience is, and with the limited speeds / bandwidth available I guess it makes pitching the product slightly harder?

Internet is pretty good in most of India, though we would all love a little bit of extra speed ;)

Though more than the speed of Internet, the telecom regulations play a large part in the solutions provided. For example, VOIP is still not legal in India for end to end communications. So, depending on the regulations our market size may vary.

And since many SMEs in India who are our target market are not Internet savy, our marketing efforts do become slightly harder and we have to rely on more traditional sales.

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#13

Post by nutanc »

kartikkumar wrote: post #11

Awesome! Really great work and it's great to see more success stories from the Indian startup scene. It's particularly heartening that a bootstrapped company can get there. I was working on trying to lay the groundwork for startup in Bangalore last year and was told by many people that I'd fail for the simple reason that government regulation would kill me. There are in fact two spaces that I've been wanting to enter…

Government regulation will try its best to make it hard, but it will not kill you :)

Actually, things have improved a lot and in fact the Government is now doing pretty good things in trying to encourage startups, especially the Karnataka and Kerala Governments, where they have setup separate funds for startups.

Space may be a little bit of problem with regulation. But with education startups, you shouldn't have too many issues.

I will write a blog post soon on our learnings in the past 3 years.

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#15

Post by kartikkumar »

nutanc wrote: post #13
kartikkumar wrote: post #11

Awesome! Really great work and it's great to see more success stories from the Indian startup scene. It's particularly heartening that a bootstrapped company can get there. I was working on trying to lay the groundwork for startup in Bangalore last year and was told by many people that I'd fail for the simple reason that government regulation would kill me. There are in fact two spaces that I've been wanting to enter…

Government regulation will try its best to make it hard, but it will not kill you :) Actually, things have improved a lot and in fact the Government is now doing pretty good things in trying to encourage startups, especially the Karnataka and Kerala Governments, where they have setup separate funds for startups. Space may be a little bit of problem with regulation. But with education startups, you shouldn't have too…

Great! Thanks for the feedback and looking forward to the blog post! I'm flying out to Mumbai on Thursday and will be in Bangalore for a few days too, so going to use the opportunity to try and figure out how, what, where, when, and with whom. Any tips, suggestions?

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#17

Post by nutanc »

kartikkumar wrote: post #15
nutanc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government regulation will try its best to make it hard, but it will not kill you :) Actually, things have improved a lot and in fact the Government is now doing pretty good things in trying to encourage startups, especially the Karnataka and Kerala Governments, where they have setup separate funds for startups. Space may be a little bit of problem with regulation. But with education startups, you shouldn't have too…

Great! Thanks for the feedback and looking forward to the blog post! I'm flying out to Mumbai on Thursday and will be in Bangalore for a few days too, so going to use the opportunity to try and figure out how, what, where, when, and with whom. Any tips, suggestions?

You can find my email on my profile. Please feel free to shoot an email and I will try to introduce you to some nice startup folks in both places.

By the way, you just missed the Product Conclave by Nasscom. This event started today and will go on till Wednesday and would have been an awesome opportunity for you to network with startup minded folks in India.

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#18

Post by kartikkumar »

nutanc wrote: post #17
kartikkumar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! Thanks for the feedback and looking forward to the blog post! I'm flying out to Mumbai on Thursday and will be in Bangalore for a few days too, so going to use the opportunity to try and figure out how, what, where, when, and with whom. Any tips, suggestions?

You can find my email on my profile. Please feel free to shoot an email and I will try to introduce you to some nice startup folks in both places. By the way, you just missed the Product Conclave by Nasscom. This event started today and will go on till Wednesday and would have been an awesome opportunity for you to network with startup minded folks in India.

Thanks! Will shoot you an email after I grab some lunch. Would be great to make the most of this trip and network with startup folks in Mumbai and/or Bangalore.

Shame, sounds like a great event. Perhaps there are others over the next 3 weeks. I'll Google around.

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#19

Post by _s »

nutanc wrote: post #12
_s wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't know much about that region - how prevalent / accessible is the internet? I hear from friends that are from India / Pakistan of slow internet speeds, access limitations and general bandwidth restrictions - I assume this also plays a part in how big your target audience is, and with the limited speeds / bandwidth available I guess it makes pitching the product slightly harder?

Internet is pretty good in most of India, though we would all love a little bit of extra speed ;) Though more than the speed of Internet, the telecom regulations play a large part in the solutions provided. For example, VOIP is still not legal in India for end to end communications. So, depending on the regulations our market size may vary. And since many SMEs in India who are our target market are not Internet savy,…

Ah okay - how difficult is it to convince SME's that tech is the future? I envision most of them are quite content with old school telephony / mail, printing off spreadsheets etc?

From what I see you guys are one of the many startups in the region now bring the old school SMB's/SME's kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Sorry for the questions - I'm fascinated by the challenges faced in developing for a market that doesn't have the same accessibility as that in developed / western countries, not to mention the constraints placed by the local bureaucrats etc.

Re: From 0 to $1 Million ARR in 3 years with Indian Customers

#20

Post by nutanc »

_s wrote: post #19
nutanc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet is pretty good in most of India, though we would all love a little bit of extra speed ;) Though more than the speed of Internet, the telecom regulations play a large part in the solutions provided. For example, VOIP is still not legal in India for end to end communications. So, depending on the regulations our market size may vary. And since many SMEs in India who are our target market are not Internet savy,…

Ah okay - how difficult is it to convince SME's that tech is the future? I envision most of them are quite content with old school telephony / mail, printing off spreadsheets etc? From what I see you guys are one of the many startups in the region now bring the old school SMB's/SME's kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Sorry for the questions - I'm fascinated by the challenges faced in developing for a marke…

No problem. Happy to answer :)

Actually its not too difficult to convince SMEs that tech is the future. Most of them are willing to try new things and thanks to the prevalence of smartphones they understand a lot of the terminology.

What is difficult is to convince them that "your" tech is their answer. Though many of them are content with old school gadgets, they will shift once we showcase the advantages of adopting the cloud etc. In most cases, we get into an account by doing a proof of concept so that the businesses get the feel of the system before they buy.

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