SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1032 How Indian RetailTech CEO Is Attacking Market with Tags
22 May 2018
Chapter 1: What is the background of Deboprio Ghosh and his companies?
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company.
It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Dipoprio Ghosh.
He's the CEO and founder at a company called Rowango. He's an AI and ML, which is an AI, that's artificial intelligence and machine learning based retail analytics and proximity marketing technology company. He's also the co-founder and CTO of Sustainalyze, which develops AI and ML based simulation software for chemical and materials research and development.
Dipoprio, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, I am.
Very good. Let's jump in here. So let's focus on, well, just to be clear, are you running two companies right now, Rwango and Sustainalyze?
Yes, I am the founder and CEO of Rwango and I also happen to be the CTO of Sustainalyze.
Okay. Which one do you focus more of your time on?
Well, I focus more on Rwango because it's my baby. It's a product I have built myself. So Stenalyze is mostly the product that my co-founder who did his PhD, it comes out of his PhD. And I helped his science into converting into a software.
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Chapter 2: How does Rewango's proximity marketing technology differ from traditional methods?
If I look really hard, where will I see these beacons? Are they at the entrance? Are they on every shelf? Where are they?
They have, you are not supposed to see them, so they kind of put it at places, mostly a little high where there are less obstructions, because the lower you put them, there are more number of obstructions that kind of affect the range of these devices. So they're generally, you find pillars in these large mall setups Right.
They're located a little high, about 10 feet above the, you know, from ground level on the pillars.
Got it. Okay. And what range do these things have? They can read anything within how many feet? 100 feet?
Around 80 feet is our tested range. You know, we can assure that it works up to 80 feet. Although we have, you know, special beacons which have antennas where we have extended the range up to half a kilometer for certain special use cases. But yeah, generally the off-the-shelf beacons that we sell have around 80 feet range.
Okay. And these are just because these are Bluetooth, not radio frequency identification devices or active RFIDs.
These are not Bluetooth. I would say these are not RFID devices. These are hybrid beacons which have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. I see. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi because Wi-Fi, most people keep Wi-Fi enabled on their phones. So the reach for proximity marketing with a technology like ours is 10 times greater. I see. With just Bluetooth devices.
Take us back to the backstory here. When did you launch the company?
We launched around 2014, we started building this product. It all started when I visited US. I was in Sunnyvale and I was visiting a Macy's store there. I never knew even about Bluetooth beacons and I found some of these small, round, funny devices, cute devices, I would say, on these stores all around. I asked, what are these devices? They said they are Bluetooth beacons.
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Chapter 3: What is the business model of Rewango and how do they generate revenue?
I mean, I'm really worried about that kind of stuff. How are you thinking about cybersecurity relative to your product?
We don't have what you're talking is something looking forward to where we have pricing and other information into the system, into the hardware. And from there it goes out. I would say you inject blockchain into this whole equation and, you know, the whole infrastructure becomes much more secure. So are you an ICO? Yes.
Oh, you are. You're playing an ICO.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, yes. We are looking into it very actively. But, you know, it all depends. Why is everybody? Huh? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, why is that? Your question is, why is everybody talking about?
No, my question was going to be is why are all the VCs saying only shitty companies ICO?
I don't know. I heard completely different thing in Europe. I just come back three months from Europe and Everybody, all the VCs are talking about ICOs. Is it different in America, it seems?
Yeah, there's a few. Many investors are going, yeah, only our portfolio companies who are struggling are the ones that are thinking about an ICO. But ultimately, look, I think maybe there's some truth to that. But also, you know, raising capital via blockchain is a significant threat to raising money via VC if it takes off, right? And if it's sustainable.
So they obviously don't want to see that kind of stuff take off too much because it threatens their ability to get deal flow.
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