Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay, got it.
Chapter 2: What is the projected revenue for Sulekha in 2015?
So this quote that you gave the outlet Live Mint was a projected revenue for 2015 of $30 million. Projected revenue. Got it. Did you miss or hit?
We were off by 20-25%.
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Chapter 3: How does Sulekha's marketplace model work?
And you'll get interviews three weeks earlier from founders, thinkers, and people I find interesting. Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public. We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years. Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise.
Or Looker CEO Frank Behan before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
Chapter 4: What sectors did Sulekha target when it launched?
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On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Satya Prabhakar.
He's an Indian-American entrepreneur, engineer, writer, and the founder of Seleka, India's leading tech AI platform for expert services, offering SME service providers the best mobile SaaS medium to grow their business through matched prospects and market intelligence. Satya, you ready to take us to the top?
Chapter 5: How many users successfully find service providers each month?
Yes, I am. Thank you for your time and for your interest.
You bet.
Chapter 6: How does Sulekha generate revenue from service providers?
So just to be clear from a business model perspective, is this a marketplace business model or is there a SaaS component as well?
Well, at this point till now, it is a marketplace business model where experts, when we say expert services, these are services, service providers who offer high value services where there's a lot of user engagement in terms of which service provider that they choose. for providing the service. So for these things at this point, Sulekha is a marketplace model.
What we are is that we are for these SMEs so that they can get the right kind of consumers, not just from the Sulekha platform, but also from outside of Sulekha platform from various search engines and other local services marketplaces.
And you list all kinds of things on your website, from finding ways to score IT, to finding jobs, to finding rentals, all kinds of stuff. Take us back to when you launched the business. What was the first sector you targeted?
See, initially when we launched the business in 2007, and primarily in India, and we have a strong presence among Indians living outside of India also, which are the non-resident Indians. So initially when we started the service, it was primarily a classified kind of a service. So, which people were primarily.
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Chapter 7: How much capital has Sulekha raised to date?
So as we evolved over the last about 10 years from the time, what we have done is we have focused on services as the main stay of the platform. where consumers are looking for service providers and service providers are looking for motivated buyers, which are consumers on this side.
And there's a lot of friction between the trying to match these two things because the service providers don't have the credibility of the brand like big banks and they need an independent platform to attest to their credibility and their reputation.
And take me back, give me the timeline here. What year did you launch the company in?
We launched the company in 2007 in India.
2007, okay. And then if we fast forward to today, over the past 30 days, how many people successfully found a service provider through your platform?
Right. So we have close to, you know, about 7 to 8 million people who use the service platform. every month, 78 million people who use a service every month were registered users. And what does that mean though?
A registered user is less interesting than someone who actually got matched successfully with a service provider. So how many people actually got matched?
The ones who are matched successfully to service providers per month would be around about 600,000 to about 800,000. Okay.
And when you facilitate a match between someone looking for a service provider and a service provider, how does Suleca make money?
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Chapter 8: What challenges did Sulekha face during COVID-19?
So when the service providers subscribe to the Suleca services, based upon the city and the category in which the service providers are, we estimate what is the number of service matched and verified service requests that they get.
And there is a cost that the AI algorithm of the platform estimates for the city category based upon the value of the service, based upon supply demand, and then says that in this period of time, we will be able to serve you So many match service requests and these match service requests are valued per service request so much.
And the system automatically comes up and say, this is what you need to pay for a three-month period or a six-month period. So there is accountability on part of the Sulekha to the service providers in terms of what is the matched value that they would get from the platform.
And so on average, was a service provider paying you per month if you're actively bringing them matches?
Yeah, correct. And that one actually, Nathan, varies from anywhere between $100 to about $2,500 a month.
And it just depends on the number of matches.
On the number of matches and also on the value on the service. For example, let me give you a small example. If you're looking at a painting contractor, the value of match service request can be $2 to $3. But if you're looking at a large event organizer, the value of that thing can be anywhere between $15 to $20.
So it varies based upon the value of the service. And have you raised capital to grow the business or are you bootstrapped?
We have raised capital to grow the business. Yes, we have. How much have you raised to date? Till date, we have raised about $40 million.
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