Ankit Gupta

How did Freshworks achieve ARR $597 Million? Recently in a podcast: https://lnkd.in/gXRbFXMt Girish Mathrubootham mentioned how SEO helped them build a huge awareness, eventually resulting in traffic and a lead pipeline Making it possible to do product-led growth. That's how important SEO is for any SaaS business Start investing in SEO today to build a sustainable growth engine #seo #SaaS #marketing

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The season finale of my podcast Salaried Talks is here. This journey has been incredibly fulfilling—meeting new people, understanding their career paths, and sharing their insights with you has been highly satisfying. This final episode encapsulates everything ThatSalariedGuy stands for: helping salaried professionals level up in their career journeys and grow. I hosted Karna Chokshi, COO of apna for a candid discussion on the job market in India and how Apna aims to help millions achieve their dream jobs. We explored different job opportunities in India, the market size, why apna was founded, Stanford days of Nirmit Parikh and Karna Chokshi, Key priorities for apna, Innovations that apna team is working on and finally some time tested strategies and tips for working professionals to stand out in this competitive market. Karna Chokshi with his strong academic background from IIT Delhi and Stanford GSB, has been a lifelong hustler. This 70-minute episode captures his valuable insights from the Job market in India and his career journey and pivots. One highlight for me was his unique take on engineering education: “Engineering teaches you to learn and unlearn quickly. Completing 48 subjects in 4 years, often relying on hustle to clear exams, equips you to adapt and solve problems better.” I resonate with this, as India is a land full of opportunities, and having problem-solving skills is essential if we plan to achieve the coveted $5 trillion economy tag. Tune in to this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Links are below. Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gB4NUm6y Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gmJ4GAGY Also huge thanks to Arpan Khosla Rishabh Jain Jeet Srivastava Anuraj Singh Anirudh Vikram Tomar Srishti Saxena Raj Parakh for helping out in each and every step of this podcast. Without them these 9 episodes would not have happened so smoothly. There are quite a few exciting avenues that I plan to explore in Season 2, keep an eye out, announcement coming soon 🙂 Onwards and Upwards 🚀🚀 #SalariedTalks #ApnaJobs #CareerGrowth ————————————————————————— Shashank Srivastava

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Koo is shutting down. Since yesterday, we have been also discussing this in on our UXH WhatsApp group. A user commented that this is India specific problem: of building copycats and then dying out. And few of the founders are just playing on emotions: taking Big Tech head on with nationalism plank but with less substance. My two cents: - I do think there's a merit of Build in India for India use cases especially given wars are no more just about physical attacks. - However, the logic just because you are a Made in India product and people will use it is highly flawed. - One might get initial traction but that's not the way to go about it. When already superior products are available it's not easy to switch. - The bar for few of the verticals like: Social Media platform, cloud platform is already so high (Features, Network effect) that even a 100% clone might not work. You need an edge for people to stick around. And I believe the edge comes when positive experiences are there for a user. When I talk about experience, basically providing a good customer experience for your users where the emotions can be triggered: Help & Support, Great UX, Active listening to feedback and Acknowledging it are few areas that come to my mind. I always root for Indian products and would love if Indian founders start focusing more on experience bit. India story is just getting started. No matter if Koo is out, I am pretty sure there will be many hustlers who might be already building an Indian Social Network that will disrupt the Big Tech :)

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A Log Analytics startup in Bengaluru called Parseable bagged $2.75 million in seed funding from Surge and NP-Hard Ventures. #newsupdates #newsflash #newsupdate #newsfeed #startupnews #startupindia #startups #startupecosystem #indianews

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So recently, when I was doing my expenses analysis. I saw a huge jump in my groceries cost. I was regularly buying groceries from zepto and swiggy instamart and then I did shopping at local shops, what did I notice? 1. In comparison with local groceries shop, prices are almost 30-40% higher on these apps even for items that are for daily use like vegetables. 2. The quality of their products will always be under scanner because you will not see how is it when you buy compare to local shops 3. You will be charge platform fees, handling charge, delivery charge, convenience charge, and if you are buying on odd time then you might have to give surge fee which constitutes around 20-40% of overall price just for you being inactive or being lazy not to go to market. While it is easy and convenient to buy on these apps but giving almost 60-70% higher price just for convenience doesn’t justify the cost where you can always go to market within 1 km range and get the groceries in a cheaper price. Now the question arises, Can these app become successful in non-metro cities, towns and villages? Is this business sustainable enough in long term because the customers are most selfish and they will go wherever they find the cheapest prices. You doesn’t create a brand loyalty here in this business that will help customers to stick to one platform. Building for Bharat doesn’t only means build for high net individuals which resides in metro cities and get first time freedom of ( >8 LPA income) The research says purely online or offline player cannot stand in indian market in customers point of view and they have to go to omnichannel way to cater both the online and offline segments customers. The day any Indian startup can figure out how to build a business and startup out of India will be historical progress for India in long run? Only time will tell if it is achievable or not. PS: I have resuced my consumptions of these app because I was spending 2x more on groceries purchases in order to reduce the cost and it was costing me big time. #zepto #swiggy #instamart #groceries #buildforbharat #10minsdelivery #indianmarket #india #tier1 #tier2 #tier3 #progress

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SCOOP: Urban Company has turned profitable at PBT level (profit before tax) on a consolidated basis in the last month. The development will potentially smoothen its public listing plan which is likely to happen in 2025. My story:

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SaaS GTM: The Mechanics of Exponential Growth by Santosh Sharan - a youtube video with incredible value that only got 161 views (shocker). In case you didn't know, Santosh is the COO of Retention.com, mastermind behind RB2B, ex-VP Product/Growth at ZoomInfo & advised a load of data SaaS companies you've definitely used, including Gong... I like to geek out on GTM strategies, and this one SLAPS. Here's a little Google Doc I've put together (in collaboration with Samuel Svestka & ChatGPT) which summarizes the hour long video: https://lnkd.in/d4r7EEnn ✅ Drop a like if I should share some of my other findings on SaaS GTM strategies. ✅ Don't forget to drop Adam Robinson & Santosh Sharan a follow, their approach to building in public is defining a new paradigm in B2B SaaS.

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Building Consumer Apps in India - Series 1 Currently there are about 17L apps on Playstore out of which, 13.83L do not have any rating, not even from friends and family. You can consider them to be not so serious about pushing the app. If you care about your app, you are already ahead of 77% of the apps. Then comes the apps with rating less than 3.5 which shows your tech team is not actively debugging or your app is really short lived and has no consumer utility. If you stay consistent and do even bit of user research prior to build, you would be ahead of another 1.5L apps. Staying ahead of 86% apps. The real struggle for power happens between the remaining 2.5L apps. Considering the current scenario, about 1.6% of apps are social media and 4% are shopping apps and since we are building in the intersection of them, we are head-on with 14000 apps. This is where geography and other factors come in to support, and you finally have to fight against 5% of 14000 apps, ie. you effectively are competing against 700 apps to be the best amongst them. Now comes real product play. What do you think is the reason most apps fail? (Consumer Apps) #consumerapps #koo #product #appstore #playstore #developers #apps #shopping #socialmedia #social

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**Founders & GTM leaders ** -- only 2 days left to sign up for Lightspeed India'a #MastersOfSaaS session with the creator of MEDDIC - John McMahon known widely as the BEST salesperson in the world. John is a board member at companies such as Snowflake MongoDB ThoughtSpot and more! This will be an online session on JUN25th 8-9PM IST / 730AM PST. Please RSVP early to reserve your spot: https://shorturl.at/ZPLxH We'll discuss: - common mistakes in setting up sales teams - learnings from being a CRO at multiple 100M+ ARR businesses - how to hire A+ talent, every. single. time. - and much more!

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By June 2022, Koo, raised more than $50 Mn at valuation $285 Mn. Fastfoward to July 2024, Koo has shut shop. 🐤 Be its logo featuring a yellow bird (strikingly similar to erstwhile Twitter’s blue motif) or the VOKAL pitch, Koo left no stone unturned to attract users amid the growth of social media platforms due to the nationwide lockdown. Let's look at the financials, and where it went wrong! 🛑 Revenue 💹 Source of Income : Marketing Services FY21 0.08 Cr. FY22 0.14 Cr. just 14 lakh INR as revenue against operating cost of 202 Crores. Operating Expenses 💱 FY21 24.8 Cr. FY22 202.0 Cr. EBIDTA Margin 🔻 FY21 -3,002.56% FY22 -4,022.54% Even after having raised capital in excess of $50 Mn (400+ Cr.) since its inception, the startup found NO INVESTORS for its Series C round as the financials were “not impressive enough,”. In late 2023, even cofounder Bidawatka conceded the fact saying that Koo was caught in a sour market and had to switch its focus from growth to generating revenue. Many Indian startups are struggling due to its failure to raise funds as investors tightened their purse strings amid a raging funding winter in the past two years.Trajectory has changes from GROWTH to REVENUE. #e-commerce #startups #funding #koo #product 

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Unlock the power of food delivery data with Swiggy API! Accelerate your business insights and stay ahead of the competition. Read More: https://lnkd.in/dGUkxqBp #Swiggy #SwiggyAPI #fooddeliverydata #businessinsights #datadriven #techtrends

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Highperformr.ai Bags $3.5 Mn To Give An AI Boost To B2B Marketing 🔥🥳 Highperformr.AI, a marketing SaaS startup floated by former Freshworks executives Ramesh Ravishankar and Srivatsan Venkatesan, has raised $3.5 Mn (INR 29.2 Cr) in a seed funding round led by Venture Highway, with participation from The Neon Fund, Matrix Partners-anchored DeVC and other angel investors. Founded in July 2023, Highperformr.AI leverages generative AI and LLMs for a social media management platform that helps businesses maximise return on investment (ROI) from social media campaigns. 👉 Ex- Freshworks executives led Highperformr.AI bagged the fresh capital in a seed funding round led by Venture Highway and with participation of Neon, DeVC and other angel investors 👉 The startup’s first product, Highperformr for Teams, leverages generative AI and LLMs to help B2B businesses maximise their return on investment (ROI) on social media campaigns 👉 The fresh capital will be deployed to further the startup's research and development activity, build the platform's native AI capabilities, and expand its distribution network “The large TAM and the incumbents’ pre-GenAI era solutions leave a significant opportunity for Highperformr to innovate and disrupt the social CRM market,” said Priya Mohan, partner at Venture Highway. According to Inc42, the Indian GenAI space is projected to grow exponentially in the next few years, surpassing $17 Bn by 2030 from $1.1 Bn in 2023. A large trend in industries like fintech, enterprise tech, healthcare, among others, has been companies introducing GenAI mechanisms in smoothening and automating how they communicate with their end customers. Follow FounderHub for more... #startup #startupnews #news #ai #marketing #b2b #Genai #funding

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While Dune 2 has an overall 8.7 stars on IMDb.com, it is "7.1 stars, based on ratings from people with preferences similar to you" Should products like IMDb.com Swiggy Zomato start providing such personalized ratings & reviews? In addition to overall ratings & reviews from all users After all, don't we choose to trust a feedback based on who is giving it and whether they are like us PS: I know Amazon owns IMDb #product #personalization #imdb #dune2

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In any data driven company, it's the DS folks who tie the various aspects of business enabling eng, AI, Product, Operations to cross function and strategize. To be an effective DS, One of the key learnings I have had is Familiar yourself with the domain to be effective. Even a skilled DS can take 6-12 months to learn the nuances of a new domain. Every domain presents its own jargons, sets of problems, true norths & metrics to optimize. In my 12 yrs stint as a DS, I worked in multiple domains insurance, telecom, security, retail and social media. Well some obvious ways to shorten the learning curve is to engage with your teammates, ask questions, read documentations etc. But some really effective ways are to - Understand your true north, get married to it. The best DSs I know can guess pretty accurately how much a product feature will drive a metric even before ab testing. - Engage with cross-functional teams like product, operations or your users - they are your knowledge mines - Think out loud, throw in ideas and ask questions whenever in doubt. The best way to learn something faster is to be corrected faster. - Review Pull Requests whenever possible - reviewing peer codes helps you understand data sources, and find some hidden business contexts’ Easter eggs - Look at some records in your data sources before you write a line of code. You will be surprised how this simple exercise reduces data manipulation iterations. - Attend all hands horizontal or vertical. Might be a slightly less popular opinion but it really helps you be connected to the - business goals. No Wonder, why 85% of the AI projects across product companies are not aligned to business goals. - Share any insight, tool or technique you used recently with your team and be part of these sharing sessions to learn what and how others have mined in the data. PS: The image is just for fun, improving my prompting skills to test gpt to its limits. #datascience #learnings

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As someone who's experienced the convenience of quick commerce firsthand, I’ve often get amazed at the speed and efficiency of services like Zepto, Blinkit and Instamart. However, as Zepto aims to raise $650M at a $3.5B valuation, I can’t help but wonder about the sustainability of this growth model. I’ve seen similar patterns before—companies burn through vast amounts of capital to capture market share, only to struggle with profitability later. Zepto’s 14.3X revenue growth is impressive, but their net loss growing 3.35X to INR 1,272.4 Cr in FY23 is concerning. A few years ago, I was part of a startup that faced a similar dilemma. We scaled rapidly with substantial funding but eventually had to confront the harsh realities of our financials. Balancing growth and profitability is a tightrope walk, and Zepto is no exception. As they compete with giants like Blinkit and Instamart, and face new entrants like Flipkart and JioMart, the question remains: can Zepto sustain its growth and become EBITDA positive, or will it follow the path of many high-burn startups before it? The coming years will be crucial in determining whether these massive funding rounds create lasting value or merely inflate valuations. #marketing #BusinessInsights #startups #zepto #blinkit #instamart #swiggy #zomato

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Today, June 29th, marks 9 years of our launch with just two completed bookings! Some people said it was impossible, other's said the TAM wasn't big enough, but here we are today 9 years, profitable, growing and many imitators entering the market! It's rather flattering we're seeing heavily-funded entrants despite them not being able to create a profitable core business of their own. It also further validates our persistence, patience and business aptitude 😊 From day one, we've focused on positive unit economics, building a scalable tech-stack and not throwing money at problems. With our limited resources, we strived to create proper product-market fit that would sustainably benefit consumers and driver partners, all while generating enough net revenue to build a strong brand and team. It's not just $6m that has been invested, but north of $30m from proceeds we've reinvested. So, for my gracious new competitors out there, best of luck and thank you 🙌 To my 160+ team members, 1,00,000+ driver partners, 8,00,000+ transacting users and our investors thank you for your steadfast support and belief in our brand for nearly a decade. I couldn't be more than excited for what this next year has in store for us! #startups #anniversary #teamwork #profitable #scaling

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We are hiring APM Growth 🚀 What does it take? 🎯 1-2 years of work ex in a growth role  🎯 Good with tools as Mixpanel, WebEngage  🎯 Have hands-on exp in driving GTMs & product adoption 🎯 Excited about the Kirana space Link in the comments below 

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Thanks The Times Of India for featuring Vodex.ai. #GenAI is revolutionising various industries, transforming how businesses operate and innovate. At Vodex.ai, we are utilizing GenAI to automate and streamlining the entire sales process, driving efficiency and growth for businesses.

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Struggling to measure and define Product-Market Fit (PMF) for your product? Watch this: https://lnkd.in/ge9UmkZV In this insightful video featuring Brijesh Bharadwaj, Ex-Director of Product at Dunzo, he dives deep into effective PMF measurement strategies. HelloMeets - Upskilling platform for PMs. #PMF #ProductManagement #HelloMeets

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