Venture Capital or Angel investments aren’t a must-have, to make your startup successful. This has been proved again and again by many bootstrapped and successful startups for eg GrabOn, Zoho, Zerodha, Wingify & others.

The guest of our today’s episode Rajdip Gupta, CEO & Founder, Route Mobile, similarly has an exquisite journey of taking his company from being completely bootstrapped to getting listed in the share market and growing to a market share of Rs.11,000 crore+.

Just to understand the faith amongst retail investors in Route Mobile’s strong growth potential, you must know that in September 2020 its Rs 600-crore IPO was oversubscribed 74 times. It made a stellar debut with a 105% rise on day one of the listing.

As a niche player operating in an extremely dynamic, high-growth segment of the cloud-communications space and catering to the digital user engagement needs of enterprises, Route Mobile has a limited number of competitors and no publicly listed rivals.

During the podcast, Rajdip shares with us, what are the various offerings Route Mobile has for its enterprise customers, where it stands against its Indian competitors and how he personally tackles things to bring a work-life balance in his daily life.

Notes –

01:53 – Creating a story & value from India

04:17 – Solutions for enterprise customers

10:02 – Scale & revenue breakup across geographies

12:25 – Benchmarking against Indian competitors

16:07 – Challenges during the early phase of building Route Mobile

22:19 – Work-life balance and unavoidable circumstances in a startup journey

36:11 – Future plans for Route Mobile

 

Read the full transcript here:

 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 00:00

Hi, this is Siddhartha Ahluwalia, welcome to the 100x entrepreneur podcast. Today, I have with me an entrepreneur who has taken not only his company public, but built it from complete scratch with $2,000 In his hand, he is rajdip, founder of route mobile, route mobile, even known face in India, in cloud, and route mobile has gone recently public. Rajdip is here today to share his journey on what are the nuances that an entrepreneur has to go through on a day-to-day basis, Rajdip, I would like to start a conversation with how did you find out it was the right time for you to take the company public?

 

Rajdip Gupta 00:50

Good evening, everyone. It’s a good question, you know, like for a founder, you know, like if you start building something from scratch. And once you reach to a scale, you know, there are few ways you can actually create value for yourself and your employees. And also, I think they can be strategic, they can be VC, there can be other way. But I always believed that, you know, like, if I want to create a story within India, I want to make sure that the Indian startup can also get listed in stock market. And it is not that you always need to be VC funded, or a VC backed company to get listed, that kind of support, if your fundamentals and if your conviction about your products are clear. And you know what you’re building, which has a value. I think, I think we realize long back and this is what we are and I think the kind of potential cloud communication as a platform has, is going to create, I think, what we always wanted to change the way people communicate, you know, like, how can I add more value to my enterprise customer to have a rich communication media so that they can engage with their end user. And I think we always believe that a platform plays a very big role in multiple companies both also, whether it’s a startup or as a quality player or as a bank. When we realize I think there’s so much to working with almost 30000 customers globally, we are working with almost 800 operators, plus 260 operators, as a direct partner, we have a scale, we have a very clear growth plan for next three years down the line, what I need to do is like just define my growth strategy for quarter one quarter two year on year basis. And when we are very confident about that, that this is what we are going to achieve in one year down the line or two years down the line. When we lay down our entire plan for future innovate, so we realized that listing is the best way to raise funds. And that can create value for everyone. And it’s a great thing to create value for people and our investor also, you know, and what I really felt good about it, like we never raised funds, you know, till the time we went for IPO almost 16-17 years, you know, we were always cash rich. And we always wanted to create startup which can get listed anywhere in the world. But I thought because I’m from India, and it’s better to listed in India, and two to three years back, I think we realized, let’s go public. We started working on that. And that kick is there saying that yes, we have created something which has been used by global enterprise customer, Ott players, operators, they use my platform. So, I have everything what some of the large US based listed companies are having, as compared to in this same domain. I said if they can do it, why not I, you know, so that’s the reason we decided to go public. And I think a post listing, I think we got a very good support from our investors. People team, you know, yeah.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 04:04

for our listeners, if you can share, you know, what route mobile is? How does it help enterprise customers and the current scale? of route mobile?

 

Rajdip Gupta 04:19

Yeah, I think it’s a good question probably. So, if we talk about Route Mobile, we are a cloud communication platform provider, we are a platform company. So, if we talk about a single if you just withdraw money from your bank account why via ATM, the moment you withdraw, say 10,000 rupees from your bank account, you will get one SMS saying that you have withdrawn 10,000 websites, you need OTP. That OTP also flows to our platform. The moment the OTP is generated or you withdraw money, you also get an email saying that as a fallback That email is also part of our platform. At the same time, there are various other cases use cases like if your flight is delayed by one hour, you get a voice call saying that your flight has been delayed by one. And the next time for this particular flight is x y. That’s my voice API we use recently, we launched the WhatsApp in the RCS API along with primary API as well. And now you get lots of QR code on your WhatsApp, you know, like, so we partner with WhatsApp to make sure we start building API solutions over WhatsApp API. And we can start selling those API to enterprise customers. So, like, your movie ticket, or your QR code, or your entire boarding pass, come as a, you know, like an image on your phone via WhatsApp. So that API is also part of our offering. Recently, we have RCS as a solution, which is again, same like a two-way communication platform. RCS and IP messaging is more about communicating with end user to create a two-way communication journey for the end user. You know, like when you say SMS is just like impression, the moment you talk about RCS is conversation. So that’s a whole platform. So, any point of time and enterprise, if enterprises are looking out to have a better way to communicate with their end user, they use our platform, whether it’s email, SMS, voice, RCS, WhatsApp, you know, you name it, or Facebook Messenger, you talk about telegram API’s. So, we are a platform company, which has all the channel of communication available within our platform, it’s up to the enterprise customer to select which way they want to communicate with their end user to have a better user engagement. And that’s what we provide, we provide a platform to enterprise so that they can create a better user engagement with their end user.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 06:57

And if you can take us through the last four or five years of the journey, how has route mobile first grown in number of enterprise customers in India and outside India. And second part, how has the revenue grown?

 

Rajdip Gupta 07:14

So, if you see our revenues, I think that we’re showing the growth over 30% year on year basis from last five years, in fact, then from last five years, I think we have started focusing more on the enterprise side of the business. And we always wanted to create a sustainable business model, where the customer going to be with the company for a longer period of time. And that’s the reason we started focusing more on a pretty core, enterprise base, operator base and the Ott players. So, once we are very well integrated within the enterprise ecosystem, it’s very tough for someone to replace, because it’s a short code, it’s email, there are lots of API integration. So, I think last five years back, we realized, if you really want to scale ourselves, to the next level, we were working, we already have offices all across the globe. And we thought, working on one side of the business, which is only on messaging, we need to create more product offering to our existing or a new customer. And keeping that in mind, we built this whole stack and we have things starting from the banking customer to deadlines, you name it, like I think there is not a single vertical who’s not using our API’s today, because every vertical requires to communicate with the end user. And those they need API’s, which is provided by and that is a beauty about a platform where anybody can just connect update form within five minutes, they can start using our APIs.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 08:44

And what was the total number of enterprise customers which use route mobile as of today?

 

Rajdip Gupta 08:49

Since its inception, I think we have almost over 30,000 customers and we have 2500 active billable customer every month. So that is the current status here.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 09:03

And the current revenue what would it be right, what the company information is public, right? But I just want to take the users through the journey of how you know it’s been growing continuously.

 

Rajdip Gupta 09:21

Yeah, if you see our presentation here also like maximum amount of revenue comes from the company based out of US, which is about 40% of the revenue. Then we have another market which is Africa, the Asia the Middle East, Latin we are still building up but we do have a very good influence to that market also. So, 40% coming from US. Then second largest is probably APAC. third largest is Africa and forth is middle east.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 09:53

and the current revenues total. I believe they are above the tune of 700 to 800 Cr.

 

Rajdip Gupta 10:02

No, it’s a 1400 crore we have achieved last year. So, we almost touched over a million dollars in revenue last year. The last quarter we did about q1 we did about 380 cr.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 10:18

And being a public company for Do you have the pressure to grow continuously, right? Because you can’t. And the 30% growth, right, you can’t now the decelerate beyond 30%, it can’t be 20-22% Is there a pressure always on the CEO and the management

 

Rajdip Gupta 10:37

it’s up to the founders to think like, so, it is always great to have pressure to perform right. And it is not that we are started growing at that rate now. But from last six, four or five years, if we see our trajectory, we are always grouped by that kind of growth rate. So, for us, whatever guidance we are giving to our investor or a public, we know that we have a very clear idea that we will achieve this. And the sea pass industry itself is accelerating right now. If you see the digital adoption, in various parts of the world, you know, like is booming, you know, like everyone is doing all that transaction through mobile phone. And if you just take a simple stat right now, you know, like the mobile phone, the smartphone penetration in India is about 50%. Which means that 50% audience within Indian ecosystem is still not using the smartphone, the moment these people will have smartphone access, that is the kind of market we are still waiting for. And that was in Africa, Latin America everywhere in the world, right. So more than number of devices are going to be smarter, I think more than the number of transactions to happen. So, I think the growth ratio is definitely what we are talking about is achievable. And we have achieved in past and we are cheering last year. Also, I think, last financial year, I think we’ve shown over 40% growth, in spite of pandemic situation. But the pandemic has helped mobile company, where we supported various enterprises to have a better way to communicate with their end user, that the only way people can communicate is through the digital platform.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 12:22

this area’s very competitive, there’s the segment which you operate, and how have you been able to, you know, differentiate yourself and kept the growth rate constant over the last many years.

 

Rajdip Gupta 12:32

It’s all about the platform, which plays a big role. From India, probably there’s no company who scaled out your world at a level with which we are right now. like there might be Indian competition, we’re competing with us within India market, we’re connected with just four operators. At the same time, we are connected with 800 to 900 operators globally. And we have partnered with over 260 operators globally, which means that we directly sit within their operator network and we are having the direct connectivity, we have built a platform in such a way that we can connect the way operator wants us to connect. So, I think we spend lots of time and energy, especially to building up this stack. And that’s the reason probably I can always say that I’m I think I’m ready to accept any kind of challenge also, because my platform is far better than anybody else. In current market in India, where it is not about just four five, three operator connectivity, my platform, the OTT player, they use my platform not for only one country, they use over 100 countries or 30-50 countries. So, they believe that the kind of platform and connectivity we have is totally different than some other players. But there is competition, we have in market like we compete the same, we compete with Julio, message bird. So, they also have the same evolved platform like what we have, right. And this they have same kind of interest with time, which we have. But again, if you see your international market, so many companies won’t be there

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:06

can you share about the initial struggles when you started with route mobile in 2004?

 

Rajdip Gupta 14:12

Yeah, I think that is interesting question. And I have gone through all this struggle, what every founder that is going through or gone through. So yeah, but again, I can just tell you guys that in 2004, there was no startup ecosystem evolved as what we are having today. During that time, the funding was not available, as easy as it is available now. And I think when we when I actually launched, started quoting the entire platform in 2003 I think a few years back the entire dotcom boom was busted. people were reluctant to invest in any ideas, you know, and but again, maybe it’s good for me, but during that time since you Don’t have a proper ecosystem for startup community, you don’t have a proper funding available to grow your story. But I always believed that what I building has a value, and it will actually create some kind of problem-solving state for enterprise. So, I had a conviction about my product, which I’m building will change the way people communicate. And I always focus on international market, then India, you know, India used to be just one paisa SMS during that time. And I said, this is not the market for me at that point of time, we started focusing in India in 2013, where the pricing increase and we said this is the right time to get into Indian market. But on a struggle wise, yeah, I started building the whole platform with the second-hand PC, like with just 16 MB RAM, and I think hardly disk space. And with secondhand PC, and the only way I can come in, build something on I even if it just to compile a program, it should take five minutes, you know, forget about the execution, you know, like, but again, that was a fun time. But so having that kind of a PC creating problem for you, you could get the PC to your hardware guy to pave the way and come back again. So, I think I have gone through that phase where I was an account manager, I was accountant, I was CEO, sales guy, support guy. So, everything you know, like so it was fun, but it was very, very exhausting. And sometimes people say that it looks good now. But if I go back, so it was not that easy. But again, I think almost every founder has that kind of agility. Because they are trying to change the way we will do stuff. And that is what the founder’s conviction is. And so, I had the same conviction. revenue of one crore year one, which is uh, you know, like, phenomenal for us to you know, like those, that they get a revenue of one cr. So, it from one cr once we once I got that one prudently with two or three people, I say now it’s more about reinvesting money back to the company. So almost 10-12 years, you know, like, I just took 12,000 rupees salary. We never took the, we would rather like so Sandeep joined Route Mobile in 2005, he was working with PwC as a consultant with a chartered accountant. So, he used to come every Saturday to make sure our invoices are properly managed money that’s coming in or not, you know, so he used to just work as a part time accountant for us during the weekends. And after one year, when we realized that there is a potential, we have more people. So, he joined any side focusing more on a finance and accounting side of the business. I said, I will take in technology and sales side of the business and we started hiring more people. We had our first office about 10 by 10, where four of us is to sit. And that’s only I think, we were paying rent of 8000 rupees that someone could afford during that time. And we are proud that the team which builds the entire story with me in 2004, they’re still with me, and they’re still having the same belief in my vision. And now we are looking more than 400 people things are operating from 18 countries.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 19:19

so currently as you said the total number of team strength is 200 or 400

 

Rajdip Gupta 19:28

400. More than that, that is only for my route profile. We have another company like call to connect a BPO where we have more than 1000 people then you have a firewall company which is separate 25 people. So, I think when you talk about the route mobile so we have about 400 people

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 19:51

and how much time it took you to reach from one cr revenue to 10 cr revenue per year.

 

Rajdip Gupta 20:00

So, I think I’ve read it many places and I think I always believed that for any founder, the first dream should be the million-dollar revenue. So, rest is forgetting about it like so, I always work that way like so, my first idea of achieving is not 100 crore or 200 crore or 500 crores, I always wanted to reach 1-million-dollar revenue. You know, during that time the dollar needs to be 45 to 46 rupees. So, we thought, okay this is what our target is. And I think year 2 we reached three and a half crores probably and year three we raised hit 1 million

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 20:44

that have been a wonderful milestone, an offer and validation as an entrepreneur that you have been able to scale. till this point in time.

 

Rajdip Gupta 20:54

When we hit the million dollars, I think that was a biggest achievement I felt the most it probably the entire team was so happy that we achieved a milestone. Like then people ask me what is your next milestone, I said, Guys, there is a way to say like we have to accept, the thing with the weight is coming, you know, like I can set up a billion-dollar mark also, but that is something will take time. It is not that we have a genie, which we will run and billion dollars will come and I say let’s focus on work. If we can achieve $1 million, which means that we have something which people can buy, and that is the conviction we all need to have rather than focusing what we are going to achieve in what type. If we are good at our delivery, if you be good at you know, vision, the whatever you are building, we will get customer for sure. And I think we’ve started focusing more on a product or service and operations. So, make sure that we delivered things on time make sure we serve customer on time. So, I think those are the few areas of customer focus is what is a key for us during that time. And today also, and the rest we leave it on the market time to decide.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 22:17

And building from India for global at that point of time, were there challenges in building your sales team reaching out to customers making customers believe in an Indian company.

 

Rajdip Gupta 22:31

That’s a good question. So that in fact, you know like when we started talking with various customer base or Middle East or UK. So, there is always this question right, the Indian company, probably, I think Indian means like Wipro TCS, HCL. So, that’s only company, people used to know somebody replacing some large company to small company. So, there was lots of apprehensive position to have, and we have gone through that, sure. In spite of we had everything would bank in customer required or operator required. But as we grow, you know, but what we made sure that we always keep in touch with that kind of customer. As we started growing, as we started onboarding, larger customer, we always went back to them, we always build the relationship with the guys, this is why we spent three years. So, I was working with Google almost seven years back and like then they say I want to onboard as my customer. So, it took almost three and a half years for me to convert Google as a customer. But we were very, very, you know, like, focused, like this customer has to be part of your company. And so, I think every small achievement, you know, like, we start sharing with the team, this way thankful the team at Google also, they always used to listen to us. They always used to talk to us regarding anything they were doing. There are few people we had during that time. But we never lost hope. Okay, if I’m not able to serve this customer now, but probably maybe after one year, or two years down the line. And I always kept my you know, pipeline alive. I said, any customer if I have communicated in past, that customer has a potential maybe not today, maybe tomorrow. If there is something which we’re missing right now, let’s go back and build and prove them that Yes, we can. So that’s how we started focusing. And we actually do had lots of appearances from large customers, but as this have seen our growth and when they saw that we are doing really good and then say okay, fine, we’ll let’s give it a try for a trial. You know, because onboarding large already pay sometimes you need to do lots of due diligence is you know, security checks and all this stuff. So, we actually focus on the right area at the right time. All of them with whom we started the initial conversation maybe later on, but yes, at the right time

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:08

And what were those qualities, if you can reflect in you as an entrepreneur that you kept pushing ahead in a head, right, you never looked back, or got satisfied with the growth at any point in time.

 

Rajdip Gupta 25:24

So, I think the first thing for an entrepreneur is, is not the question is, I think there is a debatable point, some say, never get satisfied, some say always get satisfied what you achieve, too. So, I always believe that, whatever I achieved, I have been good. And that satisfaction, I always took along with me to my home and say, I’m going to sleep well today, because I have achieved something. So, I never kept that kind of a goal that I want to do this in this quarter, I want to do that, you know, like, this is what I said, this is what my way of working, if I’m, if I’m doing the right thing, if I know that this, whatever I’m building may, have not requirement with that customer today, but maybe tomorrow they may need. So, for me, it is very important that be satisfied what you achieve, and always look forward for the new things in life. So, whenever you get up in the morning, we should have something to build something to do something to focus on. So, I’m always said even will say, sitting in this room talking with you. I think that whatever I achieved before six o’clock or seven o’clock today, it was phenomenal. And I’m very happy with that.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 26:42

And if you can share your process of managing yourself and managing business, are there some key aspects of your processes that other entrepreneurs can learn from?

 

Rajdip Gupta 26:54

So, I think we all know, the entrepreneurs Life is full of sacrifice zones, we, we cannot just say that I’m successful that I’ve not been a sacrifice. Because I have missed so many my parent teacher meeting of my kids, I have missed so many vacations, like I missed so many things in life. Because there’s two priorities. I know, it’s a company and the family also, but I understand to balance it, made various times I think we had missed that. I know. And at that, that’s a very common thing. It’s not that people are trying to, to purposely or they have some kind of dream, or they just want to focus their vision. It happens if you’re in a meeting for a very important meeting, which is a large customer. At the same time there is another mirror PTM is happening. You may need to sacrifice, you know, like that happens. I can say yes, it is. I’ve just calculated the amount of travel I have done in 17 years, you know, like it’s almost four years of that time, I stayed away from my family. So that is a time you know, like and my kids were very young. They were just, you know, growing up. And those moments also I missed. But thankfully, because of this pandemic situation, I think the best thing it happens to parents like working parent like me, probably I spend lots of time with them, you know, so get those sacrifice those time. I always try to manage time; I always try to make sure that I be with them on weekends and take them out. But again, sometimes you end up working on weekends also. So yeah, but now at least we have so many people so many a team. So, I get enough time, at least during the weekends to spend time with my family, my kids. So yeah, I think that they are also happy the role that they have seen the success. And somehow, I think my wife also played a big role in my story. She always knew that whatever I’m building is going to be great. And that’s my vision in a fashion. So we got a full support from her as a wife also plays a big role for any founders life, you know, to be honest, because you cannot just do things without your better half support. Because that is the understanding

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:25

and can you tell us more about your family, your parents and your life before route mobile where you grew up.

 

Rajdip Gupta 29:36

So, I am a born and brought in Mumbai only. I did my BSc in physics and computer science from National College. So, I’m a Bandra boy kind of thing. You can see that that’s a guy who used to have their post my graduation, my parents, normal working people. We didn’t have the liberty of having everything. As a You know, child. Yeah. But they did their level best to give us a good education. And we’re very thankful to them, because they always said one thing, like, if you have a good education, guys, you can get everything. What we can give you is today’s a good education. That’s the only thing we have, rest is your life to pay. I think that my brother and we are the two brothers of myself and Sandeep. And Sandeep is a chartered accountant, very good in academies. In a brilliant guy. SAP consultant. I’m more on the tech side. So, I did my BSc physics and computer science, I started working with the various companies, as software developer, I work almost six or seven years. I said, whatever knowledge I have, I think I can start to make up.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 30:49

And what mental cushion was there for you? That even if you fail, right, it’s okay. At that point in time.

 

Rajdip Gupta 30:58

Yeah, I think day one only when I left my assignment with two companies in UK, I came back to India and I say I told my family and my wife also. So, I don’t have very clearly, we were just two years in Paris. I said, Listen, give me one year, time, I told my family also, if I fail, I’m qualified to get a job. You know, so it’s not that it is going to impact everything, like so. But I want to try and fail. Okay, it’s better to do now, rather than later on, because that’s age. I mean, I started this company when I was 28. You know, and I said, I want to try and fail rather than never try. And that is what I told my parents also, it’s a one year, if I get the success is fine. If not, then I will start working. So, I’m very sure that the kind of technology I had, during that time, even today, I will always get a job, and good job. And I was actually working with good companies, and they’re in pretty good salary. So that question was never there in my mind that what next would be it wasn’t Not that I will not get a job or I will not work well, okay, fine. I am always having that skill, which is going to stay forever.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 32:16

But was there any time that during your journey of Route mobile that you thought it’s too challenging, or you will not be able to make it the next day? Were there any such failures during the journey.

 

Rajdip Gupta 32:31

So, there are various incidents, as is not that it will be life on my side, if I say that there is no, the breakdown happens can be a situation, you’ve worked very hard with a customer to have a very good impact on your revenue, you really spend lots of time on that. So that’s heartbreaking to consider, then there’s a loss of, we were just building our infrastructure, sometimes you know, the infra within hosting in India, that hosting ecosystem in India was not that great. Sometime was server going down and it’s not working the banking customer having a lot of problem. So, all these things have gone through, you know, at some time, I say, oh, God, what’s going on? So that frustration, everything happened.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 33:23

And if you can reflect back, what were the years that, you know, route mobile grew that you think like this, this, when you felt like this will be a billion-dollar company, in your journey.

 

Rajdip Gupta 33:36

2013-14 that’s what we when we started engaging with the large enterprise customer. When we start onboarding. Like banks, as a customer said, the kind of potential the market has the sea pass is going to play a big role in everybody’s communication. Like, because phones are getting smarter, getting smarter, you know, like a phone used to just not have this feature phone anymore, and people are going to do multiple things with devices. And I knew that people will start watching cricket match on their own devices. And that is going to happen. And if the data is going to play a big role with a data company like jio coming at, you know, offering data services with dirt cheap. So that is a time when we realized I think I’m in the very right place, I will speed to the next level down to focus to acquire more companies to have a product portfolio within route mobile. So, we acquired the first company, a Malta based company, you know, maybe second company we acquired a small Indian competitor and then later on, we acquired a company based out of Malta which is a specifically firewall company who does lots of to provide lots of insight to operators on their revenue leakages, and would clear out mechanism. So, I started building stag within route mobile. Well, if I don’t, I already have a cash, if I can’t build, I will buy. So that the entire journey of onboarding a customer, for other services, I want to make sure it should be faster than we build. And keeping that in mind 2018, we acquired one company, that company I think today, we also called for company now five companies. So, we already have a customer base, and all these customer requests, another way to communicate and if you have everything as a part of your offering, you know, everything, you know.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 34:49

And what can you share about the future? Like? What’s your plan for route mobile? When do you see you know, visibility that? Yes, route mobile can be a billion-dollar revenue company.

 

Rajdip Gupta 36:04

So not far away. We have already achieved $200 million. Yeah, right. And from Germany from 100 million to $200 million, is just two or three years, two years down the line, right? From 200 million to a billion is just high time. So, I’m not sitting at $10 million, and I’m dreaming for a billion dollar, I’m sitting on 200 million, and I’m dreaming for a billion dollar. The way we are working right now, you know, like the way we are integrating a product, the way we are enhancing our product. If you say like email, we have added we have added RCS capability, WhatsApp, firewall, you know, all this thing has a huge potential. And I think if you talk about new profile, five years down the line probably or four years down the line, I might do a billion dollar in three years also. Okay, but if you say with current rate, probably within four years down the line, I will have a billion dollars down the line. Because we are talking about the numbers which we have achieved year on year basis. And we have seen the growth if you multiply that math, you know, like maybe four years or five years, we may be a billion-dollar revenue.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 37:21

That’s great. And what’s your ultimate goal, right? You want to keep on building keep on adding new products to route mobile. And

 

Rajdip Gupta 37:32

so, I think the ultimate goal is to get into new technologies. And being a tech founder, it is very important because I understand technology. It’s not that I need somebody’s idea or somebodies view, go to a meeting with the product team. How do you guys see, because there are so many things which I explore myself ideas on the blockchain ideas on other technologies. So, we want to make sure we keep on enhancing our product offering. And we want to make sure that we invest at the right time in the right product. Because there may be some product which is too early for the market. But it’s better to be ready. Whenever this change happens. You will be the early adopter advantage of that. And keeping that in mind if you see our RCS strategy. Now email strategy, or Viber. WhatsApp, I think we are fairly placed in the market right now. And we do see good traction happening people are adopting new channel of communication. And I will keep on building new products. And I will keep on focusing on technology

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 38:43

so, the journey keeps you very excited toying with new products, giving it in hands of customers.

 

Rajdip Gupta 38:49

Obviously, I’m so bullish if you see my interviews, also, I love to answer all the tech question when people ask me. So, I’m in a space which is full of excitement, full of technology full of new things, you know like messaging when you say SMS and now, we say that we do have SMS is one of our part of our offering. It is not just one offering, right? Even we have a very less revenue coming from the new channel of communication where the adoption itself is lower. Whenever the adoption issue goes high, probably we get the advantage of it right. But it is exciting for a tech founder to understand what is the future going to be right? today. You see, IoT is going to the next big thing. We are people still talking about IoT we will estimate but how it is going to evolve our daily life. You know how the people going to communicate within the IoT devices is the next big thing the blockchain is they go to the next big thing. The data is going to the next big thing if the data is a large biggest thing in future. Probably blockchain will add value to that. So, so there are so many things still very early stage, you know, and it’s better to work on those areas, you know, like, you talked about your robotics, you know, people still struggle to understand how the robotics is going to change, you talk about AI ml, you know, like, there’s so many things to do it. But again, this all can be a part of your communication strategy. Right? For me, anything which communicates with other devices as a part of my C passport, or there might be, you know, like customer support or experience. But end of the day, it is a communication channels, which is going to be play a better a bigger role for everyone’s life. When you talk about online purchase. I’m talking about this 10 year back, people used to just, you know, like, this was so scared about using their credit card, or internet, right? So, they always feel felt that oh, it may get hacked or somebody may you misuse. But you see now, you know, like the amount of Google pay transaction amazon pay transaction happening, people are going and buying everything through Amazon or Flipkart. So, I think the adoption mentality has changed. And people believe that the digital is a better way for them to save their time and have a better result.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 41:26

Thank you for much Rajdip, it’s been a delight to have this conversation with you on the past. To understand your vision of Route mobile, and how you are building for the future. It’s been a very exciting conversation for me and a huge amount of learning.

 

Rajdip Gupta 41:43

Thanks. Thank you very much.

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