SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1647 How He Plans to Beat Basecamp and Monday
27 Jan 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Innohabit Technologies and its product Voices?
launched this company voices from scratching his own itch back in 2016 now about 200 customers paying 10 bucks a month so two grand a month in revenue really competing in the product management space that's how he plans to beat base camp and the mondays of the world they are cashflow positive very small team one two three people in india 15 monthly churn is too high but he's hoping that his marketing plan in 2019 drives that churn down and drives additional growth
Hello, everybody. My guest today is Ravi Anaswamy. He is the founder and CEO of InnoHabit Technologies, incubating various innovative products using analytics and deep learning. Currently, he's focused on a company called Voices, which we'll focus on today. Ravi, are you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely, Nathan. All right. Tell us about the company.
What's the company do and what's the revenue model? How do you make money? So Voices is a product management tool. So we help Our target users are product managers who are focused on their end customers, trying to find out their requirements and trying to build products. So that's what we try to do. We give them workflows.
We give them tools to make things easier and how they can work with their engineering teams. It's a very tech workflow product. And our revenue model is usually with smaller, medium enterprises, the technology companies. It's a SaaS pricing model, though? Yes, it's a SaaS pricing model. monthly price per user sort of a pricing model.
And so on average, what's the company pay you per month to use this? So $10 to $40, we have a range of things. So differential pricing based on the functionality and features what they use. Okay, so I'll call it 10 bucks on the low end. And when do you when Robbie when you launch the company? What year? So this is 2016, so it's two years now. So, yeah. And why build it?
I mean, it sounds like you're doing a variety of different things. Why'd you build this and how do you decide where to focus your time since you're doing so many things? Yeah, so voices came out of our own business need.
So when I was a product manager at Nokia, my previous company where I used to work in my corporate life, we saw that most of the product managers really did not have tools to get things done. And I feel this is the same problem entrepreneurs also face when they go about building their products. And that's where the whole thing started. So we actually are our own main users.
So for most of our products, we use voices. So we experience our product every day because we are also the users of the product for other areas of our business. So this is something which Gartner also recognizes for two years now. We are part of Gartner's list of all the product management tools in the world. So we are twice now.
They've not yet made the magic quadrant, but we are one of the top 10 companies in that list. And how many customers have you scaled to? So this is, in India, we are in a stage that we are working with small and medium. It's around 50 in India. 5-0? Globally, 5-0. And globally, we get a lot of SaaS-based customers.
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Chapter 2: How does Voices differentiate itself from competitors like Basecamp and Monday?
So these numbers vary between a few hundred, so around 200 to 250 customers. Okay, so 200 customers paying 10 bucks a month is about 2000 bucks a month in revenue. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay. And again, so that's obviously a very small amount of revenue. Why not like double down and focus on this or kill it and focus on the other thing? Like why do so many things at once?
So it just as an entrepreneur, I wanted to work on various ideas, which that's the reason the company name was also in a habit. We wanted to build various things and see how we build those products. So that was sort of our excitement. So Voices was our first product we built as a SaaS product. And like I said, we are our own main users of that product. Where was it a year ago?
You know, by the way, I totally understand why it was built. You use it. You needed it. You scratch your own itch. Totally get it. Totally understand the product. Where were you a year ago in terms of revenue? So a year ago per month, if you're doing 2000 today, what were you doing a year ago?
So it was approximately less than half of it because we started off slow because we were getting some traction. Most of the traction has been in this year. And we are hoping that we will get, I mean, we want to scale it up a little more in 2019. I think that's the scope. Because we haven't done much of marketing in the U.S. market, which is where probably most of our customers are.
So we were focused most on India and Asia, trying to see if we can get the customers. We realized that many of these companies have their decision makers in US because that's where most of the companies are. Yeah, I mean, it's a fragmented space, right? I mean, you've got Monday raising tons of money for project management. You've got Basecamp. You've got older players like Trello.
I mean, how do you break out of the noise? So those products are mainly looking at project management. We are one of the few companies looking at the product management. A little difference in terms of how we mainly focus on what requirements to look at, how to prioritize, how to build a product.
Those things that once you talked about Basecamp and others are more about project management, where they're looking at how the tasks get done. We are looking at which tasks to do. So that's a subtle difference between the two areas of work. Okay, Top Drive, many of you ask me all the time, how did I get my website up so fast, so quickly, and why is it doing so well? The answer is simple.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the company face in terms of customer churn?
I bug the hell out of them. They always get back to me. So I've got you 30% off along with $100 in free AdWords credit. To grab it, just go to HostGator.com forward slash Nathan. But you got to do it now. Again, HostGator.com forward slash Nathan. Have you raised capital for the company or are you bootstrapped? I'm bootstrapped. Bootstrapped.
And cash flow positive today or are you burning capital? No, we are cashflow positive. So we are working fine with that. Okay, so cashflow positive, but you're only doing two grand a month. The team must be really small. Yeah, it's a small team. We don't have a large team for this product. How many people?
So we, because it's sort of a consolidated team on this area, we have three to four people working on a monthly basis. But because it's, like I said, we have multiple products, so we have people whom we cross-use. And everyone's in India? Yeah. Everybody's in India. Okay, very good. Do you know yet? I mean, so churn, obviously, on a SaaS company is critical. What's your churn? So we get a lot.
companies from various countries in Europe and other places where they come inside, try two, three months and go out. So we sort of see churn from those countries. Whenever they come in, they go out very fast. So two to three months is a trial period once they use a couple of times and then they stop using. Yeah, so on a percentage basis, what's churn?
On a percentage basis, we sort of see 15% go out on a monthly basis. Okay, so that's really, really high churn. I mean, you want to be like sub 2% typically. I mean, why is your churn so high? How do you get it lower? So the reason being most of these companies want to try product management workflows, but their workflows are different from what typically the standard workflows are.
They need a lot of customization. That's why we reach out to them to see if we can customize things for them so that then it becomes a little more B2B sale than a SaaS sale because there is no one standard workflow fits all. So I think that's where the churn starts to happen for us. So who's your biggest competitor? Who's doing the best in the space, would you say? So AHA is the largest one.
I think AHA is the biggest company and they really target the large enterprises. The licensing model is for the large enterprises. But we are mainly targeting on the small and medium enterprises. Okay, but again, I guess what I'm asking is, is this something you want to scale or you're okay just using it for your own team?
Because if you want to scale it, you'd be going all in on figuring out how to get churn lower and drive more customers and these kinds of things. So at this moment, 2018, we didn't really push it very hard in terms of getting into the market.
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Chapter 4: What is the revenue model for Voices and how much do they charge?
But there is now a marketing plan in 2019 that we really want to scale it up in the U.S. market because being in India, we couldn't really do much in the U.S. market. We tried to work with channel partners. We worked with Atlassian user group and Atlassian where we are on the marketplace. We try to get various channels to reach out to these technology companies.
We got limited success, but 2019 is where we want to put a lot more energy opening up those channels and see if we can get the US market. Very good, Ravi. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Uh, business book. I really look at, uh, sort of a, uh, good to great. So what was one of the book thing I read?
And also I think, uh, uh, the book on, uh, I'm not getting the name of it. Good to great as a good one. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? So I usually, uh, look at Steve jobs as an inspiration for the, uh, all what he did. I think that's something which I always don't. Number three, uh, what's your favorite online tool for building your company besides your own?
So we use mainly, let's say, Google applications, most of the Google applications on the SaaS side. So we have more of Google users on that way. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Four to five hours. I think that's what I manage. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? I'm married with a son for 14 years old. And how old are you? I'm 45.
Okay, Ravi, last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? Sorry. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? Yeah. Sorry, I probably still didn't get it. There's some noise coming. Okay. What is something that you wish your 20-year-old self knew? Okay. The art of really listening to customers. I think that is something I learned quite a lot at this time when I'm an entrepreneur.
So I think I felt technology is all what is needed and you can build anything. But now really understanding what the customers need is where the biggest learning has been. Guys, listen to customers launch this company voices from scratching his own itch back in 2016. Now about 200 customers paying 10 bucks a month. So two grand a month in revenue, really competing in the product management space.
That's how he plans to beat Basecamp and the Mondays of the world. They are cashflow positive, very small team, one, two, three people in India. 15% monthly churn is too high, but he's hoping that his marketing plan in 2019 drives that churn down and drives additional growth.
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Chapter 5: How has the company's revenue changed over the past year?
Robbie, thank you for taking us to the top.