Lalit Bize

So the number of sales executives, so PepsiCo has 10,000, so they may pay me more.

An SME who has, let's say, 500 would pay me less.

Then another SME who's only 100 would pay me even less.

So Bisola as a product was launched in 2012.

This is our six-year-old product now.

I am a technologist.

I mean, I am a geek.

I have no idea how I did not have any idea how this whole FMCG and distribution and other stuff work.

Chance meetings with a couple of other entrepreneurs who were building products in that particular space.

They talked about their difficulties in understanding the sales on the ground, working with this mom-and-pop fragmented distribution ecosystem in a place like India.

It looked like a really silly problem to me, to be honest with you.

It looked like a simple problem that a technology or a mobile application could solve.

In 2012, if you remember, smartphones weren't as prevalent as they are in India today, though iOS was fairly popular.

popular it was too expensive in a country like india to afford android phones weren't as cheap as they are today uh so there was this kind of a barrier to entry for all of these brands to use mobile first technologies but for me it sounded very simple as a smartphone app connected to cloud a workflow automation platform which can digitalize multiple workflows so to say so i converted that business problem into a tech problem

built a quick, so to say, MVP for first two customers.

We rolled it out in the market, measured that ROI.

My first customer had only four users, if I remember correctly.

It was one of the guys, two guys that I spoke to in the first place.

So I essentially told him, will you pay me money if I build this?

And he said, okay, here is, not only that I'll pay you money, here is my first check.