Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:00
Hi, everyone. Siddhartha here from Neon Show.

I’m also a managing partner of Neon Fund, a fund that invests in the best of enterprise AI companies. Today, I’m very proud that one of our founders that gave us a good exit are there on the Neon Show. Vishwa and Ankur from Zenduty.

Welcome, guys, on the Neon Show podcast.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:19
Thanks, Sid.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:20
You can chill and relax. This is going to be a good conversation.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:22
We are chill, we are chill. Probably the most relaxed that we’ve been in like 15 years.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:29
Yeah. So now you’re going backpacking one year after that acquisition, I believe.

Ankur Rawal 01:34
Yeah.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:35
So backpacking, hiking, just sleeping.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:39
So Zenduty started almost like 10 years ago.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:42
Zenduty started about in 20…

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:45
No, but the parent company, I mean.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:47
The parent company started in 2017.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:49
And when did you guys quit your jobs?

Ankur Rawal 01:52
I quit in 2013.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:53
Yeah, so did I.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:54
So what were you doing for the next four years? After 2013.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:58
So 2013 to 2016, I think we just got together for a specific idea. Ideated, but then we realized that maybe the TAM’s too low. We built a product.

And we realized that, you know, maybe we have to focus on something else. So we spent the next couple of years just consulting for other startups and banks and NGOs in Bangalore. So we spent about three years doing that.

Then we were like this engineer number one and engineer number two for a lot of companies. The ones who are like, you know, who had raised funding or in the case of banks or NGOs, you know, they were building some very specific modules for their banking application. So we had built that from the ground up.

So we spent those three years in just getting technical expertise, learning the cloud, learning application development. Although Ankur came from building, he came from a database background. I came from a consulting background.

So that those three years really helped us sort of get a lot of new skills, which we then applied in, you know, when we founded YellowAnt.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 03:06
But coming back, you know, I think Zenduty is one of the most untalked exits in 2025 in the Indian ecosystem. It should be celebrated more.

Why do you think more people are not talking about it?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 03:30
I think it’s because we haven’t told many people.

Ankur Rawal 03:33
There are not many people who know that something has happened.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 03:38
I think our customers know.
And I would say that, and our customers are like some pretty big companies around the world. Most of our customers were actually outside India. In India also, we had some massive companies, like probably, I would say, 7 to 8.

I would say at least 5 out of the top 10 e-commerce companies were our customers. We had, you know, banks, payment aggregators who are our customers. So some of the best tech companies in India and their entire engineering teams were our customers.

And then, you know, they already know about the acquisition. So I don’t think it’s not well known. And it’s perfectly fine.

You know, there’s so much going on. So much that went on in 2025, right? So many IPOs that happened.

I think I would celebrate that a lot more than our exit. There’s so many exits that happened. And I think it’s fantastic for the ecosystem.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 04:33
Yeah. But, you know, coming again, I’ll keep on moving back and forth, like Christopher Nolan movies. So when you guys were fundraising, you know, different parts of the journey, how tough was the fundraising journey between all the raises?

And how did you choose your investors?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 04:58
So 2017 was when we raised for Yellow Eye. We pivoted to Zenduty in 2020. We had raised from GSF accelerator and a clutch of angel investors around that time.

So there, it’s just reputation of the investors. It was mostly angel investors. So we knew what they had founded.

We had spoken to them. We got FaceTime with a lot of those investors. FaceTime matters to us before we bring anyone onto our cap table.

So we spoke to them. Felt like it was a diverse set of investors. But at the same time, they, we were able to, or rather they were able to relate with our journey.

So they know exactly what our needs were because they were building and running companies of their own. We had Powerhouse Ventures, which was a really good partner right from 2017 till our exit. So Powerhouse and Shree and Shitij, they were excellent partners for us.

And, you know, they kept investing and follow on round as well. And then 2021 is where I think we onboarded most of our cap table, which included, of course, you and Neon. We had Titan Capital.

We had Startup Exceed. We had a couple of funds in the Bay Area, a couple of angel investors who came in. What really mattered to us, one is that they, well, they did get what we were doing.

They understood what we were doing. And, you know, it’s capital or it’s the kind of investors that have patient capital. These investors understood the space really well.

They did a due diligence very well, right? I like the fact that, you know, any investor who invested in us, they spoke to our customers. They spoke to our previous investors, right?

They did their diligence really well. Even in your case, I think for you, with you, it was pretty natural because you came from, you had your own startup. You came from AWS.

So you were already in that space. So it was extremely easy for us to say yes to you and Neon, right? You just got it.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 06:58
I was not sure, to be honest. Now I can share that Neon would get an allocation because I think startup Xseed was already leading around. And your first question to me was, what do you understand about SRE space?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 07:09
Yeah, exactly.

Ankur Rawal 07:10
I think this is what we look for, whether they should understand the problem statement or not. Why are our customers choosing us? I think that was very important for us because once you do that, I think you will relate to our customers.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 07:22
I had asked that question to pretty much everyone who was looking to invest. Your answer was pretty easy, right? Because you came from AWS.

You had that background. So you knew exactly what you were doing. And it was, I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to over, I didn’t have to explain anything.

You just understood what the problem was. A lot of the customers that we serve are also AWS customers. So you know exactly where we came.

Ankur Rawal 07:48
So a lot of customers understood our space because they also were AWS investors.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 07:52
A lot of investors.

Ankur Rawal 07:53
Because they were on AWS ecosystem already.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 07:56
And how many investors you said no to during that round when there was more demand?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 08:00
Quite a lot. Quite a lot of investors. I mean, we were already, we had a, we had a dilution target.

We did not want to go beyond the specific dilution. So we said, I think we said no to a handful of investors who wanted to get in.

Ankur Rawal 08:13
We did go over also based on what we wanted to raise.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 08:17
So there was an initial target. I think we, we, we went over. It was oversubscribed.

But then at some point, we just wanted to just put a cap.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 08:25
And for founders, let’s say specifically first time founders who are building now. If you can share like, how much did you dilute in the first round? And how much did you dilute in the second round?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 08:33
See, it depends on the individual preferences. Again, ideally, it’s not about how, how much we want to dilute. I think it’s about the allocation that the investor wants, right?

Every investor, roughly speaking, they want anywhere between 10 to 20% of the company at exit. Right. So you’ll, you’ll maybe start at 10 and then you keep doing pro rata or you can, you know, you can double down in, in, in next round and get a higher piece.

So it completely depends on the funds or the individual investors goals as a fund, right? They also have like a venture map that they need to work out. So ideally, I think, you know, I would, I would say that if you’re depending on where you’re incorporating, I think if you’re incorporating in India, you have your lead investor can take around 10%.

And then, you know, other, anyone who’s following can, you can, you can occupy the remaining 10%. And you can stretch it from 20-25, if you want to. You don’t, ideally, you don’t need to.

I think what if you need, so you should, you should look at the next 24 to 30 months of runway in to get that in the first 20% of your dilution. If you want to extend beyond 30 months to let’s say 36 months or 36, ideally, you should not go beyond 36 months. But if you want that kind of a runway, you extend, you maybe dilute another 5% more.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 09:46
And how did you choose to, you know, build it profitably as towards the, before the exit, the company was almost profitable. And not raise another round.

Ankur Rawal 09:55
It was a need of the hour for us.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 09:58
No, this was, this was, this was post-fund raise.

Ankur Rawal 10:00
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 10:01
Okay.

Ankur Rawal 10:01
Even after that. Okay.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 10:02
So we were, we were profitable before the fund is also right. And once we raised, it’s not that we were trying to be profitable, to be honest. So our investors, I mean, whenever we would, we would send our monthly or quarterly investor reports, right.

You include, including you, a lot of people would say that we are, we may not be burning a lot. We should be burning a lot more. And invariably, I’ll say that, you know what?

We tried burning. We, every single month, I’m spending a lot more than I’m spending the month before. But then the revenue is catching up.

So net, net, the burn is still low. There’s nothing I can do about it. If I’m burning and if revenue is catching up.

So, you know.

Ankur Rawal 10:40
So we 5x our team during that time. And it’s not like we’re not spending. We actually started spending a lot on the marketing also, like hired a lot of team, expanded on that. So we were, we were spending money.

Like he said, we caught up with the revenue. And also I remember during that phase, if you remember, there were certain cases because the market was not stable just before the AI boom. And also due to certain bank events in US, some of investors reached out to us to understand the cash position with the company.

And they were also happy that we are one of the companies who don’t need any such.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 11:17
I think once the Fed raised the, the US Fed raised the interest rates, right? I think the multiples went down. Even the funding environment from 22 to 24 was not, not that big, right?

Series A, so Series A, the bar was up. The bar went, bar was significantly higher than what it was in 2021. Then it’s fine.

All right. So let’s just get to that ARR and maintain a, you know, at least a 2x euro, a hundred percent, a minimum of hundred percent year over year growth. And maybe once you’re able to sustain that, and then you’ll be able to raise your A.

That was the idea. But you keep your cash position, you know, you have a very healthy cash position. You need to have, at any given point, you should have at least 12 months of runway.

So that even if, let’s say the market turns, you have some time to course correct and get to a point where either you get to profitability or you hit your metrics and raise the next round.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 12:07
So really, you know, Zenduty moment happened in 2020. And just the six years before that was survival.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 12:14
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So before, before Zenduty, I think we were working on the Yellow Ant product.

We got a little bit of funding.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 12:21
What was the Yellow Ant product?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 12:22
Yellow Ant was an, it was a chatbot product. It was a chatbot that resided in Slack and basically was a chatbot assistant. It connected with like your, your code repositories, your CICD applications. This is only for the developers.

Ankur Rawal 12:37
Cloud infrastructure, error monitoring tools, all those.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 12:39
This is only for your developer users, but it also worked for, for example, sales and marketing teams as well. It would connect with HubSpot and Salesforce and Marketo and like a whole bunch of other tools. And it would give you regular updates in Slack.

And there’s like a whole bunch of automations that you can do as well. So it’s sort of like a Zapier plus a horizontal chatbot. We launched that in 2017.

Got a few paying customers, but it was not a hockey stick growth for us. It was very linear. The growth was very linear.

So we knew that it was not a venture. It was, it was an entirely new category altogether. So there was like a lot of things that we realized that we were doing wrong.

One is we were not focusing on maybe like a, maybe like a single problem and a single user persona and user persona and a single buyer persona, right? So it was a horizontal platform. We were selling to pretty much every department.

That worked, that I believe that worked against us, right? And there were a lot of assumptions that we made that, you know, that we were not able to validate, which resulted in the linear growth. So we knew that PMF, you’re not getting PMF because you know exactly what PMF would look like.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 13:43
But you had raised only like one CR in your first round. How did you sustain for so long?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 13:48
Oh, we were, actually, actually we raised about two CR.

Ankur Rawal 13:52
Two CR. So it was two rounds, one in 17 and one in 18.

And I think some revenue also came. Like I still remember the, when we started getting revenue in Zenduty, I think the revenue which we earned in Yellow Ant helped us.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:07
Okay.

Ankur Rawal 14:08
Yeah. That was our money.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 14:09
It was, but we had a very small, it was a very small team. And, you know, we were, we were just like, it was a ramming team.

I don’t know if that’s even a real term. It was, we kept a very small team until we got to PMF.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:25
And what made you pivot to SRE space?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 14:28
We knew the space well because we were building products. We had used a lot of the tools in the SRE space, including, you know, alert management with PagerDuty. So we knew the space very well.

We knew the problem statements. We understood where the tools were not really serving the end-user well. It was a small TAM, right?

But then there were only three players in the market. So it was easy to sort of just build something that was well differentiated, which was our thesis was that we would build an end-to-end instant management platform, which would do both alerting and response orchestration. Right.

So that was our thesis with which we went into the market and in 2020. And, you know, we got adoption, especially with companies that needed an end-to-end platform. These are companies, you know, that were by and large, you know, they’re enterprise companies, like teams of about over 100 engineers building fast-moving products.

The companies themselves that use end-to-end were growing as quickly as we were, right? So they were really high growth companies that used our product. So we found good product market fit in a very specific sub-segment of the market.

Ankur Rawal 15:43
And we were also first users of ourselves. So while building it, while building Yellow Ant and we started using the alerts and also response side of it. So we thought that’s one place we should focus on and let’s see how it goes.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 16:00
And this is a tough space, right? So customers and investors would have asked you, how do you differentiate from PagerDuty? What had been your answer?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 16:08
End-to-end.

Ankur Rawal 16:09
End-to-end. It’s like we do not want to just alert them.

We wanted to help them focus on the resolution part also, however we can. So that was the idea because the space, like you said, the tough space, right? It also happens in seconds.

If you can’t lose customer attention in those seconds, you need to actually keep doing what can help customer resolve an incident. So that’s what we focused on.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 16:34
Now you have exited the company. Would you build again in this space if you were to build again?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 16:39
Hmm.
I mean, we can’t.

Ankur Rawal 16:44
We can’t right now. But yeah, going back, if you had to rethink about the idea.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 16:49
Let’s say if there was no guardrails.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 16:51
Yeah, if there were no such… I mean, sure. It’s still, you know, we have spoken to the same buyers that bought Zenduty, right?

I mean, there are a lot of problems that are still yet unsolved for them, right? And it’s a space where there’s always going to be there’s always going to be new opportunities and newer problems to solve, right? And there’s always a market in this space.

So us or anyone else can always go and build in the SRE space or in the DevTool space in general. There’s like, it’s expanding. If you look at just the DevTool market, like the entire universe of DevTooling, that universe itself and the market itself is expanding.

So there’s always space.

Ankur Rawal 17:38
Also, the end user is toughest to please in engineering, I feel. So if you need self-satisfaction also to build something really great, this space will give you that. And it has given us also.

We are really proud of what we have built. Every section, be it performance, be it reliability, we are really proud of what we have done for that.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 18:01
And this space, let’s say site reliability engineering space, from, if you look from top down, the largest company, PagerDuty, is valued at 1.52 billion. So for, if somebody’s looking externally, it doesn’t, especially as a second-time founder, doesn’t look like a very attractive.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 18:19
It’s, so it is only, so here’s the catch, right? It’s, the TAM is really small, but then there’s so much adjacent areas that you can expand into, right? So you can expand.

So the way we looked at it, you can either expand into, on the left is observability, which is like a crazy big market, right? And then on the right is service management, IT service management, which is again, really big market. You can always expand on the left, or you can expand on the right and you can increase your TAM.

And you’re selling to the same customer base, which is exactly why, you know, we were just, in 2024, we were just looking at, you know, we’re just planning for 2025 and 2026. At some point we knew that, hey, raise the A, you know, keep the Zenduty growth momentum going, hire a team and, you know, expand to different markets and increase the ACVs and go for higher, bigger contracts, fine. That is, that will happen for sure.

And then you start looking at adjacent products, right? What can we sell to maybe the same customer base or what else can we build to unlock maybe like a new group of users, right? So when we looked at ITSM, it’s something that for us would have been, it would have been faster for us to go to the market with a new ITSM product, we will build from scratch, of course, you know, that would have required a lot more capital to build, right?

So ITSM was one space that, where we were looking at very seriously. The problem is that we didn’t know the space that well because none of us have, we were not IT, we don’t have any experience in ITSM.

Ankur Rawal 19:53
We only used it for a very small time during our corporate journey, right? It was not, I mean, it was not It was not at the end-user level.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 19:59
It was not. So it was not a specialist experience, right? So ITSM was something that we were very skeptical.

We knew that we can build it, but we have not lived the life of an IT, you know, or a IT ops and IT admin persona. Observability on the other hand, we lived it day in and day out. Observability would have been another sort of, it was very natural, but then observability market is so, it’s already so mature, but it’s huge, right?

So the question is, how do you differentiate? And that’s probably the question that we would have had to answer if we maybe tried to move in that direction.

Ankur Rawal 20:35
There’s another thing, when we were building Zenduty also, we do not want to just be any other tool. We want to see how we can add value. If we are going there, the customer should feel like they are getting added advantage, switching to our tool or the new customer should feel they are using a superior product, right?

That was another case why we did not want to actually choose observability also, because there’s too much there and we would only be like another observability tool there. But ITSM is something where there’s a lot of scope, I feel.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 21:05
So, which is why we got like a lot of inbound interest from ITSM companies for acquisition, right? So, we fielded a lot of acquisition offers, but ITSM was, there was like a recurring type of company that tried to acquire us and that was the ITSM space.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 21:17
And finally it happened in the ITSM Space.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 21:20
Yeah

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 22:04
And for you, why did the acquisition make sense and not raising a series A?

Ankur Rawal 22:10
Like Vishwa said, right? We have to actually expand to adjacent market, right? By this way, we can actually do it two years or three years faster.

So, in the end, we are just thinking about Zenduty, how it can add more value to their customers and how they can upsell. That was one of the reasons.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 22:27
So, I think the main reason is that if you’re thinking of building an ITSM solution ourselves, the journey would have been exactly the same as Xurrent, that company that acquired us, right? We would have built exactly the kind of the same team, we would have had the same kind of investors. Even the product quality, the product philosophy was very similar to what we have, right?

So, we just looked at it like, you know what, this is probably what we would have built anyways, right? And it just made sense for us to merge instead of build something from scratch that is not highly differentiated because we are not in the space.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 23:00
And how did you, this time, you know, you have said there are many other offers on the table, but what made you move this time versus the other offers?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 23:09
I think it’s the combination of the leadership team, their traction, the growth, which was really, really good. The leadership team was, it was a proven leadership team. The growth was fantastic, which is a very high, possible income for Xurrent.

It was backed by ESG equity, which is again, you know, one of the biggest private equity funds in the US. So, we knew that, like, the chance of post-acquisition success is high with Xurrent.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 23:38
Understood.

Ankur Rawal 23:39
Also, I think, what is the acquirer intention of doing with the product, right? Here, we see that the leadership vision for our space is also equivalent to ITSM.

They also believe in that space. They just don’t want to just add a feature for their customers, instead, give them a full-fledged product. So, that is also what mattered to us.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 24:00
And what was the process in Xurrent before they gave, like, a formal LOI and agreed on the price?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 24:06
I think, generally speaking, for any acquisition, right, when they reach out to you, they, any company, not just in our space, right, they have a thesis that, hey, either we build or we acquire, right? So, there is this gap that we want to address in the market, which our existing products slash products are not serving, right? So, either we spend two years in building the product, building the go-to-market engine around it, and then, you know, and then take it from there.

Versus, you build a product that already has, you know, it’s already proven its value, there’s already revenue that it’s generating, and there’s a team that’s already built it, right? So, generally, all of these guys will come with a thesis. So, what they’ll do in the initial rounds of, you know, when they interact with you, they’re testing the thesis, okay, will this product fit well with our existing suite of products, right?

Is this a team that has the same sort of, you know, working environment as us, work culture, that’s what we call it, right? Do they have the same work culture as ours? The leadership teams, are they in sync, right?

Then, the financials also, are they running the company in a way that suits our business model? So, for example, let’s say you’re a PE-owned company, right? Profitable, rule of 40.

You try to go and acquire like a startup that is venture-backed, that is nowhere close to the rule of 40, right? So, then, from a financial perspective, it may not be a fit because those guys are burning way too much. So, you acquire, and then maybe you cut costs.

That’s one way to do it. Versus for us, I think we were, we were in a very good, we were in a sweet spot, right? Which is, we can grow, if we wanted to, we can grow at venture scale, or if we want to, we can grow at PE scale, that of PE level.

So, I think that’s probably what sort of sealed the deal for them.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 26:05
Understood. And let’s say, this is for founders, when they gave the first LOI, how much room was there to pay for price in terms for you?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 26:15
This is confidential, yeah. This one,

Ankur Rawal 26:20
I mean, but how would we know the room, right?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 26:23
We don’t know what the room was.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 26:24
That’s why I’m asking, how did you play that tech when you, for..

Vishwa Krishnakumar 26:29
And this is, this is like general, it’s not..

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 26:31
The rule is 25% up and down below what is the quoted price?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 26:36
So, it completely depends on, and again, this is general, okay, so nothing to do with our, with our acquisition, but in general, I think what I have seen is, you look at the, you look at the value that your, that the acquiring company gets by acquiring you. So, it’s a new product plus revenue plus team, right? So, you’re getting like a, some people just want the product, not the team.

Some people just want the team, not the product, right? Some people want the product, but they don’t care about the revenue, right? So, it’s a combination of these three sort of factors.

So, I think your leverage depends on which part they want more, right? Or which part do they want at all? Do they care about whether you have revenue?

Yes, because that gets added to their revenue and therefore they are, their valuation. Do they care about their team? Yes, they want to expand into certain markets.

They want to maybe, you know, have a center of excellence in certain regions. Yes, I think yes. And then finally, do they care about the product, right?

Yes, you can, they want to get your product in then sell, upsell to their, sorry, cross-sell to their customers, right? So, this will give you sort of, you can pull any of these levers to maybe get a better price.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 27:47
Understood. But listen, did you check with other founders who had sold companies before? In the process, what was the?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 27:55
I think, yes, we did. So, we spoke to a couple of founders. We spoke to mostly our VC network, including you, right?

We spoke to, you know, all the investors that invested in our company. Few of them actually got acquired themselves, right? So, we spoke to, we spoke to our investors that sold their own companies.

So, that gave us an idea on, you know, what would be like a good strategy to go into an acquisition. And I believe that helped us.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 28:22
And how fast was this process end-to-end from discovery till closing?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 28:28
Ideally, it should be done within 30 to 45 days. But I think for us, it was slightly longer.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 28:37
And specifically, let’s say, if you had to incorporate again, where would you incorporate?

Ankur Rawal 28:45
Will that be controversial?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 28:48
It again depends. Like, depends on the kind of company that, see, if you’re building something that’s serving the India market, then you know, just stay put in India or incorporate in India, right? If let’s say you’re building in the fintech space or insure tech space or..

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:03
No, but let’s say for you I’m talking about exactly if you have to build.

Ankur Rawal 29:06
So if it would have been DevTool, I think it would have been better if we have registered in US.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:12
And why is that?

Ankur Rawal 29:13
Because the DevTool market in US is much more mature than India. India is really good for SaaS I feel but DevTool as a segment of SaaS is much more mature and appreciated in India.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 29:23
Generally, you want to invest where your customers are highest. So if your market is in the US, you incorporate in the US.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:30
But let’s say in your case 50% of the customers were from Indian market.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 29:33
No, no, no, it was not. So in terms of just logos, 10% of our logos, 10-15% of our logos were India. Like maybe about 20-25% of revenues were India.

But 50% of our logos, 50% of our revenues are from US.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:51
And being like deeply technical founders, right, doing enterprise sales for the first time, how did you go about learning enterprise sales?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 29:58
It was hard, it was hard, but it was, you approach it like, it’s like project management at the end of the day, right? You approach it like a process. Everything has a process.

I do believe that post acquisition, I think we got a much better idea of the process. I think we were able to polish a lot of the things once we got the acquisition done. But even pre-acquisition while we were a standalone entity, it was, initial days I think were a little unstructured.

But then we were able to give a good solid structure to every sale that we made. So by the time we got acquired, I think it was a good process.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 30:32
Did you ever consider, since you mentioned your target market is US, moving full-time to the US, shifting your base?

Ankur Rawal 30:38
For us, when we started growing, it was COVID time, it was very difficult. We thought we will move and actually maybe expand there. But I think we were doing really good growth within India.

But the plan was if we would have not have acquired and maybe gone for the next round, maybe we would have.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 30:56
At least one of us would have.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 30:58
And how would it have helped you, let’s say, since you were already growing in India?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 31:03
Sure. But then India, I would not say that India would be the engine of our growth moving forward, right? The engine of your growth will always be, if you are in the DevTools hard space, the engine will always be the US.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:14
But you were still able to acquire customers sitting here in India?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 31:17
But only to a certain level. Would we be able to do multi-million dollar deals on a consistent predictable basis? Maybe not.

So for that, the higher your ACV, the more the need to stay near your customers.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:38
And where you met Xurrent, were you putting up a booth or it was just bumping them into an attendee?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 31:46
I don’t think they met us at a booth. I don’t think any of our inbound, maybe with the exception of one, I don’t think any of the folks that came in met us at our booth. We had a lot of, so whenever you go to any event, any conference, especially ReInvent or Kubecon, there are a lot of scouts who are out there, like CobDev guys or EE guys or VC guys.

So these are the three categories that are always out there, trying to network with every single company that has a booth. So it really does help. If you have a company with good traction and it does pay in the long term to have a booth, even if you are not able to.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 32:28
Did you have a booth when Xurrent met you?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 32:30
Yes, we did.
I don’t think we met them physically at any of our booths. I think all of these guys that reached out to us, they knew that we were presenting at some of the conferences and they reached out to us cold over email. So they engaged us, but I don’t think we met.

Ankur Rawal 32:50
But our presence actually showed them that this company is there.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 32:53
The fact that you are actually a company that is spending all this money and doing a booth at any of these conferences, it’s a signal that, hey, these guys, they have PMF and they’re a legit company. They have legit customers and it’s worth having a conversation with them.

So it signals, there’s a lot of signaling power in going to these events.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 33:14
So is it good to assume that 50% of the folks that came inbound for this process met you because you had a brand presence at various conferences?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 33:25
Conferences, and even we are also on G2. We were highly ranked on G2 and even on Google, our SEO was pretty good. So they could come through either looking at us, either because we had a booth at any of these conferences or they just came in organically through Google.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 33:48
So you would really advise founders to put an effort in these events in the US?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 33:53
Only if you’re PMF.
I mean, look, don’t just like build a product and then show up at a ReInvent. No.

Ankur Rawal 33:58
I think we were advised by you only that we should reach a certain stage before we put up a booth. Because ReInvent is there where all the serious guys come. And you would want to actually go there with your perfect pitch, right?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 34:12
You want to put your best foot forward and it’s something that you told us. We probably would have gone a year earlier if it wasn’t for you.

Ankur Rawal 34:19
But I still remember we attended ReInvent even before putting up a booth. And even attending, not actually putting up a booth was a really good experience. And the moment we entered there the first day itself, we understood that this is our market.

These are the people who we have to actually show our product.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 34:38
But be aggressive and do trade events in the US. I mean, have some paying customers. Have a good number of paying customers.

And once you know that the customers are sticky, you don’t have a leaky bucket, retention is good, the customers are growing. Once you’re seeing evidence of that, then you can go and spend. Not a lot, but you can at least put up a small booth in a couple of these events.

I think it’s all worth it.

Ankur Rawal 35:00
Because the prospective, any prospect who is coming there, they want to see success stories. They do not want to be the first person to try your product. So it’s always good to actually have those testimonials, validation from the customer.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 35:12
A lot of the companies, I saw that a lot of the founders that raised like in tens of millions, with no product, they built the product, they launched it on green. But then they’re proven founders mostly. They’re not first time founders generally.

But yeah, I mean, ideally you should have some traction before you do any of these events. And the fact that you’re doing these events signals to VCs, VCs, COPDev and PEs that you’re ready for the next step. Either that’s a new round of funding or an acquisition.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 35:49
So this is an honest feedback about Neon and you can say whatever you feel honestly. Even bad things. What value did you, like the reason that you tied up with Neon or partnered with Neon, what value did Neon give and was it less than you expected or more than you expected during the journey?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 36:09
A lot more.

Ankur Rawal 36:10
A lot more.
So I would personally say that means like we always actually value our previous customers, like GSF and Powerhouse. But you have been very much approachable, even though you participated in 21. You would be the one of the first few investors.

Even we have to come up with a stupid question. You can cut that part if you want to. But yeah, we would feel very comfortable even if we think, okay, this may not go well.

But the advice has always been helpful.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 36:40
I like the fact that, so there were like a couple of investors on our cap table that specialized in a very specific area. So we had you. You did a lot of SaaS investments, a lot of SaaS investments across border, especially selling into the US.

So it was very easy for me to just ask you, hey, this is a problem that I’m trying to solve from a go-to-market perspective. Is there anybody else in Neon who is either going through the same problem or has faced it? So I probably asked you like tens of times.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 37:14
And I’m also learning along with you.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 37:16
But then it seems like you are learning faster than I am. Because you have inside information into like all of these other companies, not just portfolio companies. You have spoken to so many founders.

By now, you know exactly what the tricks are. So even if it’s like one of those really small problems that I’m not able to figure out on my own, I was able to reach out to you. And then there are other sort of specialized investors.

I had like Powerhouse, which also has a presence in the US. I had Secure Octane, which does like only infrastructure and security. So there are like a group of investors on our cap table that I was able to reach out for.

By and large, for a very specific problem that I’m trying to, that I’m not able to solve. I think with you, I think you and Neon, I could reach out to more general problems. So even if, let’s say, it’s a query on taxation or if it’s a query on just compliance.

So I can always reach out to you for those matters as well. I was able to do that.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 38:20
Yeah, I think we are trying to always improve our GTM engine. Now, let’s say back then, my two cents on doing events was go when you have PMF. Now, it’s evolved with the market.

I tell founders, build your PMF as you start building your brand presence. Obviously, if you have money.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 38:38
Exactly.
That is always the constraint, isn’t it?
But then you can always do it in a small way.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 38:43
Yeah, or try to get free passes as speakers.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 38:46
Exactly.

Ankur Rawal 38:47
So I think that works for us also that we were able to be speaker at really good events worldwide. And we keep participating, we used to actually keep participating on that. And that actually helped.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 38:59
Yeah. And even because event is one place specifically in the US, when a lot of your target customers are hanging out and they don’t know what they are looking for.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 39:13
Yeah.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 39:13
Like on four days in the event, they are not there to only buy. Yeah.

Ankur Rawal 39:19
Because all the events in the US, right? Even these customers have spent a significant amount of money coming to that event, right? So they are not just casually there.

They are actually there to do business. And they want to actually capitalize on that. So that’s what we have learned actually going to these events.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 39:38
So if I were today, if you are a core AI native startup, like my thesis would be and it’s if you’re honest with yourself, it’s one year down the road to product market. So I would say don’t build in silos, attend 50 of those events. And as a founder, if you have the bandwidth, spend that time in storytelling, even in one on one interaction or throughout the year, that means even to validate your thesis.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 40:06
Correct.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 40:07
Throughout the year.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 40:07
Yeah.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 40:08
Do 40 to 50 events if you have a good team who is taking care of all the ops and product. And then once you have the product market fit, then go blockbusters on making sure that in your target category, they hear about you from five to 10 different sources.
And event could be one of the largest sources.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 40:30
Perfectly said.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 40:32
How would you build now again, if you have to build a core AI native company? What will you do differently this time?
Vishwa Krishnakumar 40:41
I’ll take this.

Ankur Rawal 40:41
Yeah.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 40:47
I think I’ll start with a small team, but an accomplished team. So I’ll hire highly experienced folks who are experts in either the industry or have expertise in solving either the entire or maybe parts of the problem that I’m looking to solve. So hiring and initially your core team members matters.

We’ll be very selective in choosing our core team. Second, I think from a GTM perspective, of course, we have to validate the problem first. So go and seek as much data points as possible to sharpen your thesis.

Right. Do as many sort of industry interviews as you can. If you have a thesis regarding a specific problem statement, go and validate it very aggressively and do like hundreds of interviews, if not tens.

Right. So only once you validated the problem and validated maybe a version of your solution, only then you start building. Right.

So we won’t build from day one. We validate and then we build. That’ll be, those are like some of the bigger changes.

Ankur Rawal 41:58
So another maybe start understanding AI from the first principle perspective, how things are working. Like there’s a lot of hallucination which happens in AI. So if you understand how tokenization works, even that particular part, I would also say emphasize from a tech perspective.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 42:18
Okay.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 42:19
And first time you had the luxury, I would say it was essentially not a luxury, but you had the survival skills to survive for eight years and then figure out product market fit.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 42:32
Sure.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 42:32
Do you think if you start again, would you have the same figure of product market fit in that kind of time?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 42:38
I mean, now sometimes the writing is on the wall and you just know when that’s on the wall. So you just make a piece of it and you just move on. So failing quickly, if you have a specific thesis and it doesn’t pan out, you fail.

It’s better that it doesn’t pan out within like a year or like, you know, if the data says that there’s no product market fit, maybe it’s time to look at why there’s no PMF, maybe focus, maybe sharpen your focus on the problem statement, maybe look at another sub segment and see if you can solve that one problem in a 10x better way. So generally, that’s how we’ve been able to move ahead. And we need to find those answers as quickly as we can.

Ankur Rawal 43:28
I think during our first phase also, we had gone through multiple pivots, right? Even those pivots also became shorter and shorter, like Zenduty from Yellow Ant took us like four months maybe to our first customer. So I think we’re already there on that segment.

I hope we don’t get to that level. Because from anyone, eight years or six years, whatever, so it’s still a long journey. We were able to do it because we were in a different phase of our life.

And also, we were learning a lot of things. I think we should be much, much faster now.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 44:09
If you have to make a decision to pivot, it’s better to make a decision as quickly as you can, not spend like two years on a problem and then pivot. Ideally, you should be validating it with a free call.

Ankur Rawal 44:21
Like he said, we’ll be actually talking to customers a lot more before we even start working on any idea.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 44:26
Or even if you start working, building, as in when you build more, just make sure that you get the right feedback as you continue building. Keep iterating.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 44:37
In AI, what my observation is, Neon Portfolio is like 50% second time founders, right? Like Atomic Work, GTM Buddy, Budy by the founder of GreyOrange. I think first time founders have a bigger advantage in AI ways.

The reason is you’re not carrying any bag from the SaaS era. And you are born into an AI native world. So the younger you are, that’s why you see companies like Mercor getting to 10 billion kind of valuation with good revenue.

I mean, there are multiple such examples.

Ankur Rawal 45:15
I think that will be there for the first phase.
But in any phase, if you see any actually, any way which you have seen that beat AI before it was SaaS, right? Initially, it always starts with a new player. But always it dominates with someone who needs to, who have experience because you need companies who will survive longer.

I know a lot of AI companies will survive. There are a lot of legends we’re already seeing getting groomed. But I’m just saying, with certain experience, it’s not just the technology.

It’s understanding of what actually customer needs. Everything will come down to what customer needs. And be it a second-time founder or be it someone who is the first-time founder but has worked in the industry, have that understanding that what actually customer needs.

That will always help.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 46:09
Are we doing like contrary to like a second-time founders?

Ankur Rawal 46:12
No, no, no. I’m not saying that.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 46:13
Succeeding in the SaaS environment. I don’t know, yaar. I mean, let’s see. Let’s see Dekhte hai kitna hai dum. I don’t subscribe to that. First-time founders make…
You’re right. They’re not carrying any of the SaaS baggage. But it’s also new for them right now.
Nobody… A lot… A very few select group of people have been able to sort of figure it out.
It’s only a handful actually if you think about it, right? And they all sort of come from the same value environment. So, let’s see.

I mean, I think for second-time founders, it’s an advantage. If you can… If you’re able to have a very thorough understanding of AI, I think you can think like a first-time founder as well. I don’t think that’s a big challenge.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 47:02
What location, if possible, not a constraint, would you choose to build it second time?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 47:07
What? A SaaS company?

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 47:08
No, location. Which location would you build it from? Would you build it from India, Valley or any of them?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 47:13
Both. It’s a combination of both. So, I think…

Ankur Rawal 47:16
We have a sweet spot for Bangalore. I think there are really talented people in Bangalore. And you can build a team there.

But yeah, you should also add certain advantage which Valley offers. So, if we build it again, we should have a diverse team, I would say.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 47:31
Do you think first time there was no value advantage apart from investors?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 47:35
Yes. That was the only minimal advantage that we had, I think. Having presence in both Bangalore and the Valley, I think…

It has worked for a lot of our peers. And it’s a playbook that’s already been established. So, what is working will continue to work.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 47:52
But nobody talks about the 13 and a half hours, you know, brutal grind. You as a founder do day in day out. A lot of people talk about India-US corridor.

Ankur Rawal 48:06
I think you make it work. I have seen those founders also who are working in different time zones and they have been able to work. And those companies have grown significantly in last 10 years, actually.

In SaaS space also. So, I think being a founder, you always find a way to make it work. Either one of them will be traveling a lot or either one will stay in different time zone than another.

In the end, you have to make it work. That’s what I see. But yeah, always one advice or one pattern which I have seen is any founder should stay closer to their team.

Be it their part of their team or just their team. They should be closer to their team.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 48:44
There is one founder who stays closer to the team. The other founder who stays closer to the customers. Customers and investors.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 48:50
Now you have some money, you know, that you can put in your next startup. So, what would be your play? Would you want to raise money or you want to start with your own money if you do it?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 49:03
I mean, I am not sure about that. So, you know, if you are building SaaS, I think the cost to get to PMF, I believe, has drastically come down. So, you can build very quickly.

You can validate very quickly. And you can sell very quickly. I mean, it’s like so many solutions out there that can help you go from zero to whatever, zero to, from pre-revenue to revenue and pre-product to product.

And you don’t need a lot of capital anymore. So, most likely, I think, I don’t know, maybe the initial couple of versions till MVP, probably you are not going to be burning a lot. Unless, of course, you select a very hard problem where you need like, if it’s very research intensive, there I think you will have no option but to raise.

So, if it’s just a SaaS idea, then I don’t think you need for the initial phase, you need to raise a lot.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 50:02
But it contradicts with what you said earlier, that if you are building next time, second time, you will want to build with a small team, but a stellar team. And obviously.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 50:12
Correct. So, yeah. So, that is if we are building something that is research heavy.

So, there’s like a lot of R&D work that goes into what you’re building. What I just said was for maybe like a general SaaS product, that, you know, it’s more, it utilizes existing services that are already out there. And you’re patching it up and you’re building a service for, it could be like a vertical SaaS product, right?

So, as long as there isn’t any serious, as long as there isn’t any material R&D work that goes into what you’re building, software wise. Yeah, you can always do that quickly now.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 50:57
Got it. So, conclusion is, you would start with your own and then see if it’s going into research direction.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 51:05
Depends on which idea you choose, right? If you choose an easy idea, you know, you can do it yourself. I mean, if it’s a very, and people are doing it every day, right?

Everyone’s like wipe coding. Anyone can just wipe code a SaaS company. So, if at all, we’ll choose a very hard problem to solve.

We would want to choose a very hard problem.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 51:22
Why?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 51:23
Because I think the harder the problem, I think the higher the, I believe the higher the returns.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 51:31
What are the current hard problems in your mind, not related to starting up, but which you think other people are solving are hard problems?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 51:37
I think like a lot of the problems that require like dealing with regulation, those are what I would put in the hard problem category.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 51:47
Examples?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 51:48
So, let’s look at Razorpay.

Razorpay, I think, solved a very hard problem, right? Integrating with these payment gateways and building a very reliable payment gateway, right? So, I believe they solved a very hard problem, and they did it in a very developer-centric way, which was they are moat, right?

That was a differentiator and eventually became their moat. So, in that way, I think, you know, that is one of the harder problems to solve. You can look at, like OpenAI, of course, is one of the hardest problems that you can solve.

They almost took like, what, from 2016 till 2023, about seven years to go from conception to market, right? And there’s like a lot of research that went into, you know, building what they have built. That was a hard problem.

So, these are the categories of problems that would require like immense amounts of capital. So, there are certain problems that need a larger group to work on it. If there aren’t any solutions in the market, you need to sort of build those foundational elements and you need to build a team for that.

And if that is a problem that you’re going after, then you’ll have to start with a decent amount of capital from day one.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 53:00
So, why acquisitions are so rare in India? How? Acquisitions, like yourself, are rare in India.

Ankur Rawal 53:07
Our startup ecosystem is young also, right? I think if you see the first startup which we remember, which actually inspired us also, maybe other Flipkart, Snapdeal, they all started in 2008. And those, either they are getting IPO, if you see this year, last year, 2025 hasn’t followed those IPOs, or the acquisition was happening in 2016-17 for the Flipkart.

But in SaaS space, I can say that a lot of companies which get acquired, also they, we don’t get to hear about them. We don’t glorify them also.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 53:45
Yeah, I actually agree with you there. So, there’s like supply and demand, right? So, one is if, let’s say, you’re a SaaS company in India that’s building for the world and you have a lot of customers, say, in the US, right?

So, you’re bound to quote a lot of the acquisition offers eventually, you know, once you reach a certain…

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 54:03
But they are also rare, right? I can count. In the recent last two years, you are there, then Shruti from, she sold Wingman to Clari.

Slintel was acquired by 6Sense. Then…

Vishwa Krishnakumar 54:22
Wingify and…

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 54:24
Wingify got acquired. There’s one more, right? Shaurya from Rekho sold it to Stripe.

Sure. Hard to find.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 54:32
A handful.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 54:33
We had, from our portfolio, again, after you, Requestly acquired by BrowserStack, Logiq acquired by Apica. So, essentially, like one more happened, Affable by BrowserStack. But in Neon portfolio, let’s say, out of five profitable exits, four have been M&As and three are DevTools.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 54:53
Sure.
So, that says something, right? Like DevTooling, I think, has a… I’m guessing, at least within Neon, it has a higher chance of acquisition.

So, a couple of factors go into acquisition, right? One is your current scale. Your growth rate matters, right?

And your product and your geography matters. Geography of your company and geography of your customers matter. Right?

So, generally, you know, if you’re a… You don’t see a lot of Indian software companies acquiring Indian SaaS companies. You don’t see that.

I think, in India, the mentality is that we’ll make it. We’ll make it ourselves. You know?

So, I don’t see… So, maybe, BrowserStack acquiring Requestly was probably a one-off. But we don’t see a lot of…

Even if they do get acquired, we don’t see a lot of Indian companies acquiring Indian software companies or Indian SaaS companies acquiring Indian SaaS companies.
It’s mostly…

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 55:48
But now we’re talking global, let’s say. But that’s also not happening.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 55:51
It’s going to happen now because now I do believe that Indian companies at a certain scale… You ask any SaaS company that is doing, let’s say, more than a million in ARR. Very likely that they must have fielded a couple of acquisition offers.

They may not take it because they didn’t like the multiple. Or, you know, maybe they got a multiple because the growth rate is not that high. Right?

So, a lot of acquisition offers are floating around. They’re just not taking it because either the acquisition price does not fit their model. If, let’s say…

And a lot of these SaaS companies have raised from VCs. So, they’ve raised at a certain valuation. If they have not grown into that valuation, the offer that they’ll get will be less than the previous round’s valuation.

So, there’s a lot of these constraints that you have to navigate. You want to… And even the investors that are part of the cap table, let’s say it’s a dominant investor who has invested in multiple rounds.

Right? And has a good share. They may want to exit at at least 3x of the previous round.

They don’t want to exit at 1.5x or 2x. So, there’s a lot of these factors that determine whether why Indian companies are getting acquired or not getting acquired. So, in the US, I think…

And I’ve seen this. In the US, I think, the investors are actively facilitating exits as well. M&As and exits.

You know, we… A lot of the companies get acquired. So, an investor will facilitate an exit from one portfolio company by another portfolio company.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 57:21
I think platforms like A16z can do it because one of their portfolio companies is Databricks.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 57:25
Correct, yeah. Databricks acquires everybody. Maybe that’s how they construct their portfolio, right?

Okay, maybe, you know, if this company gets to a certain level, you’re de-risking by facilitating some kind of an acquisition. In India, I don’t think the… I think VCs are facilitating acquisitions.

At least the bigger VCs, they have a network of potential acquirers that they connect with the founders. But ultimately, it’s also… From a strategy perspective, it’s not something that we did at all actually.

In the US and even in EU, for that matter, the founders are actively in conversations with the companies that can potentially acquire them. Like, if let’s say that…

Ankur Rawal 58:06
Build a stronger relationship.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 58:08
For our company, maybe, you know, we could have gone out there a lot more maybe network with observability founders or ideas and founders, right? So, there I think it’s part of the… It’s part of the startup culture where I’m building in this space.

It’s adjacent to this other bigger space. And therefore, I need to go and build relationships with the companies and the founders and the exec team of these other companies that can maybe at one point may acquire me. And that’s…

Again, acquisition is a backup for them. You obviously want to grow as quickly as you can. So, partner with them. You know, you can… There’s like so many different possible scenarios that you can unlock. So, you’re de-risking by… So, I think we need to do a lot more of that. Also, our acquirers… Most of our acquirers…

And again, when I say acquirers, the ideal acquirers, right? That can give you a good multiple.

They’re all in the US. In India, since the market, the number of acquirers are really small, probably one or two max. You won’t get a really good multiple unless you’re like really strategically valuable to them.

But a lot more of the acquirers are actually in EU and in the US. So you need to really go out there, you need to be in the US, you need to like constantly network with these companies, build a relationship, build a working relationship, even if possible build a GTM to GTM relationship that that is even better. If you can do that, with your potential acquirers, I think that can unlock a whole new set of possibilities.

Ankur Rawal 01:58:33
In your case, you didn’t do that, right?

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:58:35
We didn’t. But then I think I think I think it was all inbound, right? Our entire company was like built on like inbound PLG self service types, right?

So while we may not have actively let’s say allocated a certain percentage of the week in networking with our potential acquirers, it was never part of a strategy either, right? Because we knew that, hey, they’re growing really well. You know, economics are good.

Retention was good. Right? So all the metrics were tending in the right direction.

Our investors were happy. They were we were ready to raise the next round. We didn’t have to, we were not thinking about acquisition at all actually.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:59:11
We never planned it.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 01:59:11
We never planned it. But then, but then our marketing and our branding and our presence was really strong. So we don’t, ideally we don’t have to, I mean, you can network at the same time and you can also, you know, make a brand, your brand be present.

If your brand presence is high amongst your potential acquirers, that’s also good enough. Make sure that you’re visible in that space, right? In the same material, you get visible in G2 or Gartner or any of the social media spaces, right?

So if you’re able to do that, and you have really strong inbound, that is also good enough, I would say. If you have a one-to-one relationship, of course, that is always, that increases your chances. But if you don’t have that, it’s fine.

We got a lot of inbound. So I don’t, I don’t see it as a blunder that we didn’t actively, you know, have like an outbound strategy for acquisition.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 02:00:02
Yeah, it was a very big part of our journey. Thank you for the guidance.

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 02:00:07
I would love to build with you. As always, I would love to build with you again.

Vishwa Krishnakumar 02:00:10
Yeah, always. Thank you.