I am back from SaaSBoomi Annual 2024, held in Chennai 😎

🔹Not long ago, Chennai struggled to attract Investors.

🔹Fast forward to 7th Mar 2024 - Investors from all over globe flew to Chennai, eager to see what SaaS Founders are building and offer them help, guidance and capital

Visionaries like Girish Mathrubootham and Avinash Raghava reinstate the thought - Think Big, and everything becomes possible

Huge shout out to Team SaasBoomi and all the volunteers for putting up such a incredible event 🙌

Tusker AI : No-Code AI Computer Vision Platform for Image and Video Analytics

Tusker is a NO code AI Vision platform, which helps the entire Business Community by Automating their Computer Vision project in span of just few hours instead of weeks without knowledge about AI.

About the team

TUSKER AI Co-Founders worked on similar initiatives, and they also ran a couple of Bootstrap start-ups successfully for the past decade. 

They were professionals and worked in a Similar domain for the last 5 years where the computer Vision and Surveillance Industry were part of it but it Lacked Automation. 

So, this leads to thinking more about Innovation and Product Automation. So, in a nutshell, they are similar tech-savvy like-minded Entrepreneurs who have been working with a similar vision for almost a decade now. 

TUSKER AI’s co-founders were colleagues first, then friends, then became people having the same enthusiasm, and now a couple of innovators working on the same Vision to revolutionize and democratize AI. 

Eureka moment

Well Eureka moment for me itself had a long journey and after serving in the IT sector for over a decade now the pain point for me was crystal clear and I was cent percent sure what is my next goal for my community and how I can be suitable for solving this. 

As an entrepreneur for over a decade and coming from the Artificial Intelligence domain, I always wonder what more can be done to make people's lives easy. 

Also, as an AI Technologist and as a business owner, I should have the liberty to experiment with AI without having core coding knowledge and generate AI models.

How does it work?

Video link: https://www.loom.com/share/39008a8fb6dd446f8d56e8c3067399d8

Business model

SAAS-based model - per camera monthly subscription) for video analytics as well as API calls(per million images) and per model creation on our platform.  

Traction

Community support

Speaking on the behalf of the whole team, it would be an honor for us if any Technologists or any AI-Market Enthusiast could be our Mentor/Advisor as we are looking for these profiles to help us achieve our targeted goals. We are looking for “Global GTM” as our vision is to empower everyone at a Global Scale with our Global Enterprise Grade-Tool-kit, therefore we need a “Global Guidance” to reflect our visibility globally.

Gallabox - your all in one WhatsApp Business Tool

Gallabox is a no-code, conversational commerce platform that leverages the WhatsApp Business API to help small and medium-sized businesses improve their sales conversions.

About the team

Yogesh was one of the early Engineering team members at Sulekha where he built the marketplace for Local Services, mining deep understanding of user needs and ‘matchmaking’ with SMB offers. He was also the first Engineering team member at CredAvenue where he built the fintech marketplace for debt.

Yathin created the Value Delivery function at Sulekha, a system that kept track of what’s due to paying customers and led the B2B product at Sulekha that was used by over 50,000 SMBs to keep track of their leads and deals.

Karthik helped build Sulekha’s Local Services business from ground up and built it to a Rs 100 crore ARR on the back of over 50,000 SMBs. He saw how the Internet was impacting SMBs at the dawn of the digital era while at Sify. He built the wedding services marketplace for Matrimony with users on one end and SMBs on the other.

Eureka moment

Sales is the lifeblood for small to medium sized businesses, but they lack the resources & know-how to convert their prospects and sell better. 

We want to help businesses grow their sales through cutting-edge technologies channeled through easy-to-use tools - to digitize and automate their customer interactions.

How does it work?

 

Business model

We are a SaaS company and charge subscription for use of our product. Plans vary by features and are designed for businesses of all sizes

Traction

We now serve almost 1,000 paying customers from India and abroad, while over 12,000 businesses use our product for free.

Community support

Help us with product feedback, offer constructive criticism and brainstorm for new ideas for product road-map and for GTM.

Revealing our first Immersive SaaS Exhibition in Odisha in 3 days ❤️

Have been in touch with multiple folks in Odisha, and the startup ecosystem has been super duper helpful!

For everyone in & around Bhubaneswar - Do swing by our exhibition, there's ton of things happening here :)

What's the exhibition all about? Dropping in more info on this soon ;)

March 12th & 13th in Srusti Academy of Management (Autonomous) - See you there 🖖

Sakyasingha, Santosh, Subrat, Anil, Rashmi, B.P., Pootul - Thanks a lot for all the support :) You guys are rockstars! ❤️

Swing by the exhibition in Bhubaneswar - https://lu.ma/bsy-bhubaneswar

#BharatSaaSYatra #odisha

 

Embracing the power of #SaaSBoomi in Chennai!

Attending events like this fuels our journey at AllEvents, propelling us to dream bigger and set new milestones.

Don't miss out on the chance to learn, connect, and supercharge your entrepreneurial spirit. Every event is a catalyst for growth, inspiration, and lifelong connections.

Seize the opportunity to elevate your journey—because a happening life is a life well-lived!

#StayHappening

eChai's Singapore Startup Meetup is happening today (29th Feb, Thursday) at Draper Startup House Singapore from 7 pm to 9 pm.

🎙️

Monika Mehta

, Co-Founder, TrillionSale
🎙️

Tushar Tejuja

, Founder, Scout - AI Powered Talent Hunter

It will be moderated by

Smitha Saravanan

, Business Development Manager, IKIGAISG.

Free registration.   

“Prateek, let’s travel across India to know more about the stories of India SaaS”

4 months ago, my co-founder Sri reached out to me with this crazy text and bag full of even crazier ideas. Without a second thought, I knew I was in.

And that's how from Day 0, both of us went all in.

And here we are today—I’m extremely excited to introduce to you, The Bharat SaaS Yatra!

Our vision? To celebrate the Rise of India SaaS, and cover hundreds of stories of SaaS Founders—The wins, the losses, the challenges and everything in between ❤️

Stories not just from the Tier 1 cities, but also the gritty tales from Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities.

Hitting the road for the next 4 months to travel across 20 cities and capture the Fan-SaaStic stories out there.

Wondering, where we’ll meet? In one of the finest immersive SaaS exhibitions that we’re setting up across all the 20 cities. I bet, you’re going to love it!

Hop in with us in the Yatra 🙂

Link to register for the exhibitions

 

Thank you for the honour to be a #speaker at eChai's marketing event at Urban Vault in Bengaluru to talk about right market strategies for startups, smbs.

Thanks to eChai Ventures Jatin Chaudhary and my fellow speakers from Simplilearn, Affle, and Tars. T

he room was quite full with close to 50 budding entrepreneurs from various age groups, states of india, and countries..majority being in their 20s to 30s.

The session was for 2 hours but went for 3.5 hours with 1.5 hours for questions and answers. These were the various questions asked:

Here are the list of questions in the meantime for each of us to answer:

1) What do you see are the new paradigm strategies of marketing
2) How has <your company> experienced the shift over the last few years or in 2024 and beyond.
3) What are the changes you have been experiencing and how are you responding to those changes?
4) What is the preferred future you see for entrepreneurs
5) What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs and experienced entrepreneurs
6) What is a non negotiable for you moving forward?
Plus there were around 20 plus questions from 1 to 1 discussion with entrepreneurs during the Q&A session.

Loved it thoroughly that echai is giving the #platform to entrepreneurs to come forward and learn through communities...good to see 4 #womeninbusiness #womenentrepreneurs there.

Many people asked me if I can mentor them or help them with marketing strategies. The answer is yes, of course.

I do #startupconsulting and overall #endtoend #marketing #consulting
for businesses from industries not competing with my current company's industry.

People who expressed interests for follow up sessions, or for mentoring please book as you need it. Sharing the link based on popular requests: https://lnkd.in/gnkmHQcN

We are proud to serve schools across the nation. 

Today, with a wide network of 5,000 schools spread across 27 states and 250 cities, every member of Saarthi Pedagogy is committed to helping schools and students improve their learning outcomes.

 

Answered some interesting questions at eChai Ventures SaaS meetup in Bangalore! 

Glad to be part of the panel. :)

Attended an event after a looooong looong while.

And it was the Bangalore SaaS meetup by eChai Ventures and Draper Startup House

Learned some good deal of things from

Sai Krishna

around thinking about MVPs and what it took him to build Superblog ai. and also from

Amit Chavan

. 

The highlights from my notes say:

- B2C is hard. Sigh.
- Build stuff for yourself, solve your own problem.
- Do primary research by looking over trends.
- Consumer behavior change revolves around three axes: Energy, time, and money.
- Your first set of customers will come from your Alpha and beta users.
- Your organic channels could be from either of these:
  - SEO
  - Build in public
  - Word of mouth
- Good PMs follow revenue/business.
- Sales is getting the cheque in hand.

- SEO in the future might take a different form, could evolve into chat engine optimization.

And got connected to a few interesting folks as well.

Looking forward to more such.

eChai's Bengaluru SaaS meetup was held today w/ 

Sai Krishna

(Superblog) and 

Amit Chavan

(Vibtree) joining the panel.

List of featured participants at https://echai.ventures/events/bengaluru-saas-meetup-feb-16-2024

Let me tell you a story that seems almost too good to be true. My name is Bhavesh, and this journey starts with a simple meeting that felt like fate. In 2019, in Ahmedabad, at a networking event by Patel Business Network, I met another Bhavesh -

Bhavesh Korat

. We both believed in doing good for others, and that’s what brought us together.

We quickly realized we shared more than just a name; we had a common dream. So, in 2020, with a small team of six, we started Brands.live. Our goal was pretty straightforward: help small businesses in India make a name for themselves without breaking the bank.

The idea was to make branding simple and accessible. We wanted every small business owner to have the chance to tell their story, to stand out, and to grow. It felt like everything just clicked into place as we worked on this.

Now, looking back, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. We’ve faced challenges, sure, but our belief in our mission has kept us going. We're not just building a company; we're hoping to inspire a whole community of entrepreneurs.

Our roles also complement as

Bhavesh Korat

  manages the Tech, Finance, and sales, I manage Content and Marketing.

So, back in 2019, I just tagged along with a buddy of mine because he had this meeting about some Women 4.0 ML workshops happening across India. Honestly, I wasn't all that into it; just wanted a quick way to hitch a ride to LD BRTS and head home. But then, things took a turn.

We met this guy who was all pumped about organizing the event. They were chatting away about plans and execution, and there I was, just hanging. I had a bunch of ideas popping into my head, but I kept quiet. Then they shifted gears to talking about growing their community, and I couldn't help myself—I just blurted out my two cents on how design and branding could really make a difference. That's all I really knew back then.

Turns out, this sparked a whole new conversation, and before I knew it, I was deep in discussion with Tirth, who was running this Instagram community with over 18K followers. We met again the next day, and bam, we were on the same wavelength, dreaming big about starting our own thing in the ed-tech space, which was pretty fresh at the time. We quickly cooked up MAD—short for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science. Fast forward six months, we were teaching over 300 students and had made some good cash. But then, COVID hit, and everything just fell apart. We had our share of clashes and decided to call it quits.

Fast forward again, two years later, I hit Tirth up out of the blue, thinking we should give it another shot. This time we launched HYPR, aiming to shake up the ed-tech scene. But turns out, the timing was off; the market wasn't looking for another ed-tech player. So, we had to pivot from that too.

Now, we're onto something new called YOMO. 

YOMO is a user insights platform that enables product teams to build better customer-centric products by going beyond basic analytics. It's been quite the ride, from a random meetup to launching not one, but two startups, facing setbacks and still pushing forward. If you told me back in 2019 that tagging along for a ride would lead to all this, I'd have laughed. But here we are, proof that sometimes the smallest decisions can lead you to places you never imagined.

⁠I was associated with iBall Brand since 2001 and Vikalp joined in 2008 and we did lot of projects together for 11 years.

When I discussed about the idea of making a business intelligence software with Vikalp, he immediately came to Ahmedabad from Delhi to discuss about the next steps.

Our approach to defining co-founder roles was intuitive rather than structured. Vikalp naturally gravitated towards product management due to his deep tech background and passion. Our mutual understanding was that, regardless of our individual expertise areas, we would maintain an open dialogue, challenging and questioning each other's decisions. 

This dynamic allows us to progress collectively, guided by the strong conviction of the decision-maker in any given situation.

Exciting News for SaaS Founders! 🚀

I'm thrilled to share that our partner, Upekkha, is now welcoming applications for their UP24 Spring Cohort. This is a golden opportunity for SaaS startups looking to catapult their growth to the next level.

What's on offer?
- A robust 💰 $125K Pre-Seed Fund to kickstart your journey.
- Unparalleled 🌐 strategic guidance and support for global expansion.
- An opportunity to 👥 join a vibrant community of 300+ founders who are reshaping the SaaS landscape globally.

🌟 Why Upekkha? 🌟

Upekkha isn't just about funding. It's about fostering a community where founders can thrive, share, and grow together. With 40 startups funded in 2023 and plans to fund 70 more in 2024, Upekkha is on a mission to nurture the next wave of SaaS success stories. Whether you're dreaming of hitting your first $1M ARR or scaling beyond, Upekkha's track record speaks volumes:

- 165+ profitable and capital-efficient startups.
- 11 startups have soared past $1M ARR, with three exceeding $5M ARR.
- A remarkable 85% of the first 20 startups are cash flow positive and growing month-on-month.

Don't let this chance slip through your fingers! The application deadline is 15th Feb 2024. If you're ready to take your SaaS startup to unprecedented heights, apply now at https://lnkd.in/gcZuKGGS.

eChai's Startup Growth Networking Meetup in Ahmedabad is happening today evening at IIMA Ventures from 6 pm to 8 pm.

ft.

Zaiba Sarang

(iThink Logistics)

Bhavesh Patel

(Brands.live)

Aditya Shah

(Because)

Vishakha Shah

(Venus Logistics)

Sushil Agrawal

(Saarthi Pedagogy)

I'll be moderating this meetup.

Free registration at eChai.Ventures

We are hosting the Hiring AI Talent for Startups meetup in Bengaluru today evening at WeCP HQ, HSR Layout from 6 pm to 8 pm.

Abhishek Kaushik

(WeCP)

Shivam Tiwari

(John Jacobs - LensKart)

Shreyans Panchal

 (Yomo AI)

Free registration at eChai.Ventures