SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

766: This Company Used Evangelical Christian Mobile Data to Influence US Elections

29 Aug 2017

30 min

5509 words

2 speakers

29 Aug 2017

Audio

Description

Anindya Datta. He is the CEO and Chairman of a company called Mobilewalla, a mobile consumer, audience platform company. Before Mobilewalla, he founded a company called Chutney Technologies where he was backed by Kleiner Perkins which was eventually acquired by Cisco Systems. He has been on the faculties of Georgia Tech, The University of Arizona and The National University of Singapore. He obtained his undergraduate degree many years ago and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland College Park. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The New New Thing by Michael Lewis What CEO do you follow? – Jose Mourinho Favorite online tool? — Outlook and Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 ½ hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Drink less and study harder Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – Nathan introduces Anindya to the show 02:21 – Mobilewalla collects data for how consumers behave on mobile and processes it for mobile marketers—they have two products: mobile audience and raw mobile data 03:38 – When companies buy the audience, Mobilewalla provides the IDs and it is a one-time deal; the raw data is given on a subscription-basis which is paid monthly 04:28 – Right now the SaaS model is earning more in terms of revenue, but Anindya thinks this will change in December 04:57 – They are currently modifying the audience pricing to become a recurring stream 05:10 – They are planning to offer the data segments needed by a company and get a monthly payment for it 06:07 – Mobilewalla gets their data from different sources including the ad request system in mobile, they barter with the ad company in exchange for data 06:54 – They also put a pixel in an ad and obtain data from you as you browse 07:23 – This includes your location 07:57 – The company started with buying the information they can collect from other companies' ads and then moved on to trading 08:32 – 2014 is their first revenue year where they got $1 million from the cut of the media buy 09:10 – 2015 was also all media buys where they got $4 million 10:18 – They stopped media buying in June 2016 and played a key role in the US presidential election—the revenue generated was $4 million: $750,000 in data and $3.25 million was from media 11:33 – The projection for this year is $5.1 million (all coming from data), but they have deals with companies that include media work 12:21 – Mobilewalla was one of the key data arms for a major party 12:33 – They created segments for evangelical Christians 13:31 – Anindya cannot share who they worked for but they can say the client was very happy with their work 14:10 – They raised their capital thru venture funding which are convertible notes worth $4 million; they have not yet raised a series B 15:50 – In May 2016, all the revenue was from data and they got $12,000. In June of this year, they hit $250,000—this is a 20x growth in 13 months 16:32 – In May 2017, they made $172,000 17:05 – On SaaS, they have 9 customers with subscription accounts and they pay from $8,500 to $41,000 a month 17:21 – The biggest chunk of audience revenue comes from Oracle, they get paid based on the segments that were sold 18:10 – In June, they were close to $100,000 from their mobile audience; there are over 250 organizations buying from them including Unilever and Procter and Gamble 19:12 – Ever since they started there are only two companies who have not continued working with them 20:01 – The company has two sellers – one in New York and one in Singapore 20:27 – The total team size is 38 with 3 focused on sales acquiring new clients; the average sales cycle for a SaaS client is 45 days 21:21 – There is zero variable marketing spend for the company 21:51 – The company headquarters is in New York and the US team is located in New York and Atlanta where the US engineering team is based 22:12 – The US team size is 10, the Singapore team size is 12, and the rest is based in Calcutta, India 24:21 – The biggest amount of money they generated during the election was the "get out to vote or GOTV" – they monitored every polling booth in a certain number of states and they were able to tell the ground team who voted and who did not 25:04 – During the election their data was acquired in real time 27:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Invest in a business that can bring in profit; this will give you the capital you need for your other businesses. Data is king. You CAN barter with other companies to reduce your spend on marketing. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Chapters

1. Who is Anindya Datta and what is Mobilewalla? 2. How does Mobilewalla collect and process mobile consumer data? 3. What revenue models does Mobilewalla use for data sales? 4. What role did Mobilewalla play in the 2016 US presidential election? 5. What are the challenges of acquiring initial data deals? 6. How has Mobilewalla's revenue changed over the years? 7. What advice does Anindya have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Featured

Nathan Latka

Anindya Datta

Transcription

Chapter 1: Who is Anindya Datta and what is Mobilewalla?

0.031 - 8.222 Nathan Latka

He launched his company, his current company, back in mobile wallet back in 2013. 2014 raised $4 million in venture capital, did $1 million in revenue.

Chapter 2: How does Mobilewalla collect and process mobile consumer data?

8.242 - 27.709 Nathan Latka

2015 went up to $4 million in revenue. But this is really just solving a cash flow problem. He was doing this just on media spend. In 2016, they stopped with the media spending, which gave them leverage with big data partners and started focusing more on a SaaS-based kind of data play, which they did $750,000 in 2016. They're now growing that and ideally doing in 2017 about $5.1

27.689 - 52.26 Nathan Latka

million in projected revenue but if we just look at the data stream revenue stream they're growing almost 20x year over year from 12k last june to almost 250 or last may to 172k this may they'll do in june about 250k just on that segment This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.

52.74 - 62.45 Nathan Latka

You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million.

Chapter 3: What revenue models does Mobilewalla use for data sales?

62.61 - 83.318 Nathan Latka

He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. This is episode 766. Coming up tomorrow morning, we learn from Nick Candido. And with 10 million raised, I asked them, will you be the system of record for every chief operating officer? Well, they're well on their way. Tune in to find out how many customers they have.

83.679 - 101.728 Nathan Latka

Good morning, everybody. My guest today is Anindya Dutta. He's the CEO and chairman of a company called Mobile Wallah, a mobile consumer audience platform company. Before this company, before Mobile Wallah, he founded a company called Chitney Technologies, where he was backed by Kleiner Perkins and eventually acquired by Cisco Systems.

Chapter 4: What role did Mobilewalla play in the 2016 US presidential election?

102.149 - 116.674 Nathan Latka

He's been on the faculties of Georgia Tech, the University of Arizona, and the National University of Singapore. He obtained his undergraduate degree many, many years ago and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland College Park. Anindya, are you ready to take us to the top?

116.654 - 117.719 Anindya Datta

Absolutely.

117.739 - 119.869 Nathan Latka

Okay, very good. So kick us off.

Chapter 5: What are the challenges of acquiring initial data deals?

120.151 - 124.572 Nathan Latka

Tell us what mobile wallet does. And what's your revenue model? How do you make money?

125.497 - 150.229 Anindya Datta

So Mobile Wallah is a mobile consumer audience platform. So if you're familiar with, or for folks that are familiar with digital audiences, things like what Oracle Blue Guy and DataLogix and these companies do. So Mobile Wallah collects a whole bunch of data on how consumers behave on mobile, and then processes the data to produce Artifacts that is useful to mobile marketers.

150.329 - 165.193 Anindya Datta

In particular, we have two products. One is mobile audience, which is if you are a large CPG company and you want to market a diaper to expectant mothers in their third trimester.

165.213 - 166.675 Nathan Latka

It's Procter & Gamble, right?

166.655 - 185.724 Anindya Datta

Like Procter & Gamble with Pampers, you'd come to a mobile wallet and say that, hey, I want to target expectant mothers in their third trimester. So we're going to tell you, hey, these are the mobile IDs of such mothers. That's one. And the second product we sell is we collect such large amounts of raw data on mobile behavior.

186.385 - 202.548 Anindya Datta

Large companies like Axiom and Oracle, they just buy raw mobile data from us. Like, for instance, what locations do I see people at? What IP addresses do I see people connected to? What telecom carriers are people using for their mobile?

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Chapter 6: How has Mobilewalla's revenue changed over the years?

203.089 - 203.649 Anindya Datta

Things like that.

204.631 - 214.684 Nathan Latka

So a few questions here. So it sounds like people are paying you, kind of pay as you go. They say, we want this kind of data export. You export it and they pay you one time. Then they come back a year later, do it again.

215.727 - 237.906 Anindya Datta

Not quite. So for audience, when Procter & Gamble or Unilever or Samsung buys audience from us, they say, OK, we want to target mothers or young children or people who use the Galaxy S8 phone. And we tell them, OK, here are 10 million IDs. You use them and you pay us one time. That's one time. But when people buy raw data from us, right?

237.926 - 253.044 Anindya Datta

So when a large company will come and tell us that we want to know every month all the locations that you see people at, we tell them, okay, we're going to give it to you as a subscription, sign up for 12 months, and pay us $25,000 a month.

253.304 - 263.756 Nathan Latka

Okay. And I don't want to talk about both of these at the same time because they're very different business models. But generally speaking, is there one that's clearly larger for you, the pay-as-you-go versus the SaaS model?

264.197 - 264.297

Yeah.

264.817 - 286.655 Anindya Datta

Right now, the SaaS model is larger. If you were to take our June revenues, 65% audience was 35%. But I expect that even in December this year, audience is going to eclipse SaaS, the SaaS product.

286.715 - 289.66 Nathan Latka

And why do you say that? Don't you want to build the recurring stream?

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Chapter 7: What advice does Anindya have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

290.534 - 308.982 Anindya Datta

We do. Nathan, great question. You know, we are actually transferring. You're trying to modify our audience pricing also as a recurring stream, right? I see. Right now, companies come and say that we'll buy this audience segment from you and pay you one time. And we're telling them, no, I mean, you're using us a lot.

309.463 - 317.655 Anindya Datta

So why don't you pay us 50 grand a month and we'll give you every segment you want and you can use it as many times as you want. I see. So we're trying to convert that to SaaS as well.

317.635 - 328.388 Nathan Latka

So it's kind of decoupling from the model of saying, hey, we're gonna give you 10 million Galaxy Note data points for, I'm making this, what's that sell for? 100 grand, a million, something like that?

330.038 - 335.649 Anindya Datta

one of the people that we sell you, you pay us, you know, a fraction of a cent.

335.669 - 341.661 Nathan Latka

Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So it's more, it's almost kind of like a model that some of these companies that charge for like per API call.

341.981 - 343.104 Anindya Datta

Exactly. Exactly.

343.344 - 352.502 Nathan Latka

I see. I see. Okay. Okay. That helps you understand that side of the equation. Now everyone's wondering, I can feel them through their earbuds going, Nathan, ask him this question. Where do you get this data from?

353.444 - 379.502 Anindya Datta

So we get this data from a whole bunch of sources, Nathan. So we have, you know, so we look at exchange, we look at data coming from the ad ecosystem in mobile. So for instance, you know, there are large exchanges that allow us to look at bid requests or ad requests that go through their platforms in return for data we provide them. So that's a huge source of our data.

379.482 - 388.18 Nathan Latka

So that does, just to be clear, that does not add to your kind of, or that doesn't cut into your gross margin. That's not a cost of goods sold for you. You're trading pro bono. You're giving them something. You're getting something.