282: From $0 to Exit - How Staying Focused Allowed Them to Win - with Sanjay Ghare

One of the toughest parts about building a new company is staying away from all of the distractions of other bright shiny new capabilities you could offer other things you could provide when you've already come up with the idea that this is what we need to do. And I've been guilty of it myself of saying, Oh, we had this or what if we did this and it just takes you away from what you're trying to do. It makes it so that your focus is off and that's what we talked about today. I had Sanjay Ghare on and Sanjay with Vervotech amazing level of focus he figured out how to make sure they were a to only focus right at their exact goal at their exact mission. They didn't stray they didn't do all this other stuff. So definitely check this out because he shares how they were able to accomplish this, including the mistakes he'd made previously with other jobs other companies before he started Vervotech I think if you want to make sure that you understand how to nail an industry How to Win how to get an exit, finding a niche and focusing on solving their problems within that niche is critical. Sanjay does that beautifully. Enjoy.

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exits brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach,

and welcome to Scale Your SaaS very happy you're here. I'm Matt Wolach. I'm your host. By the way, make sure that you're subscribed to this show. We're gonna give you all kinds of amazing leaders and innovators and people who have done some great things to scale their Sass so that you can learn how to scale your SaaS. So definitely hit that subscribe button, you'll get notified of all the new shows. And on today's show. I'm really excited to be talking to Sanjay Gauri Sanjay, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Matt.

Absolutely. I'm really glad to have you here. Let me make sure everybody knows who you are Sanjay Sanjay. He's the CEO at vervoe tech. He comes from an engineering background. But as an industry veteran and influencer Sanjay leads and drives Vervotech's vision of organizing the world's accommodation data. Sanjay has also founded a technology service company called Tech Spain. Now, VervoTech is a travel technology company that leverages the power of AI to power 1000 Plus travel companies around the globe. I'm really excited to hear how they're doing that. Once again, Sanjay, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me, mate. Thank you.

Absolutely. So tell me what's going on with you lately? And what's coming up?

Yeah, so, you know, last month, Matt, whatever they got acquired, by constellation software, through its portfolio, Juniper group. Constellation is the world's eighth most valuable software company listed publicly in turn to stock search. So being honest, you know, last few months, I was really busy in the due diligence on all the process, you know, majorly in addition to day to day business things, and I think you know, next few months is, while you know, we are finishing the integration, and we have 100 day plan to, you know, do some of the things I'm you know, really focused on kind of bringing the momentum and be more aggressive in our growth than ever before. So that's pretty much you know, what's going on right now.

Well, congratulations on the acquisition. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. That's fantastic. And I think that that's something that a lot of people are really interested in doing. Of course, if you found a software company, most of the time, the goal is to have an exit most of the time, the goal is to get to that point. So I want to kind of follow your path on how you were able to do that. But let's go back, how did Viva tech come to be? What did it start? Where did that idea come from? Yeah,

so you know, Matt, I had been working in the travel technology for more than, you know, 15 years now, I have worked for multiple, you know, products. And we have solved multiple problems through different kinds of products. And one thing I have realized is in the travel ecosystem, when everyone is trying to do everything, things are not sold at a perfection. And that's when we thought about this problem that which is about hotel standardization, Hotel mappi. So everyone who is selling the hotels to, you know, travelers or guest online, they need to connect to multiple suppliers. And when when we look at the options or solutions available, there are very no lot of options in the market. But there are just one company who had been doing this for quite some time. And with the latest technology and the AI and all these things, you know, evolve. We saw an opportunity of doing things You know, leveraging AI in an efficient way, and having an option for everyone, given the size of travel industry. So that's what our idea was very simple, we will solve a very small and just one problem, but be the best in that instead of trying to do lots of things. So that's where we started with low tech with a single line of vision that we will organize the world's recommendation data will not do anything more than that. And we had been very focused around it for last five years.

Well, congrats, I think that that's so important is to figure out what is that niche that needs an answer that needs a solution? And, and how can we help people within that niche? And I think it's amazing that you guys did that? Because it probably, it probably was enticing to look outside of that niche and look at other things and say, Oh, maybe we could do that, too. And maybe we could do that. How did you remain focused on solving that singular issue?

Yeah, I think, you know, I would say experience, because in the previous roles where I worked upon, we had, you know, I would say, got into this trap. When we build something, we have some happy customers, they ask for something else. And with, Okay, why don't we do this. And we ended up building 12 to 13 products. And after 1012 years doing that, and we looked at, Okay, number of customers we are serving are probably 50 or 60, globally. So, you know, it sounds as as an as a technologist, myself, I know this trap, that, you know, getting into a trap of building more and more things really keeps you away from being the best at something. So because this was an experience in the past, we were very clear about this, that we will remain focused on just one thing at a time. We had number one in that.

I think that's fantastic. I'm so glad. And sometimes it does take that experience of trying it a different way in order to be able to get to the right answer and get to the right solution of let's stay within our niche. I think that's fantastic kudos on that. And I know that Vivatech really specializes in, in AI driven solutions, like you said it does this for for a lot of businesses. Can you explain how the technology is revolutionizing the way travel businesses operate? Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So if you look at travel industry, you know, people know the big players like Expedia booking.com, you know, Agoda all these big players, but the reality is, these big players are not contributing even 10% of the total travel industry. There are 300,000 more travel businesses, who are distributing a significant part of that, to you know, the customers, you know, the kind of reach they have into different regions of the globe. And all these 300,000 travel agencies, they try to get the best rates for their customers wherever you know it is coming from. And every other day, new suppliers will pop in and start supplying something which is better than others, maybe only for few hotels. So we provide an ability, that where a travel agency can start sourcing from any of the you know, travel suppliers popping into the industry by mapping the content within 24 to 48 hours. That is the speed of mapping content, which used to be months if new suppliers come into existence. The inventory will take months to map for the first time. Through an automation leveraging AI and ML models, we have brought that down to 24 to 48 hours based on the inventory size. So the friction, the speed of going into the market has changed very significantly, which is helping the industry to move forward in a faster way.

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Yeah, I think you know, so two things, we have to constantly invest in r&d. So we have being a very small company, we still have a dedicated r&d department who is constantly just looking for the new things, how do we leverage the new databases, new, you know, technologies, which are coming in to solve the current problems, we also go and try to attend a lot of tech events, let it be web three, or cloud specific events and try to learn from the people who maybe in the other domains, because honestly, technology in the travel is slightly behind. If you look at the other industries, so learn from the other industries like oil and gas finance, and try to apply those technology, evolution into travel is also helping us to kind of move forward and fine to kind of come up with the new things.

I love it. So glad you're staying on top of it. Okay, so when you got started, I want to kind of go through this journey, as we talked about so that people can understand how they can achieve what you've done. So what were some of the good decisions that you made in the early days after the launch that really got you some initial traction and got you some foothold with some new customers?

Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, amazing question. And I love that. So we started back in October 2018, which is, you know, almost five years back, when we decided to do this. And we were very clear with the vision. And I would say, when I look at the decisions we had taken is, first of all, no matter how great product you build, but you have to really present in front of customers. So, we were very clear, we have invested from day one in marketing and marketing not only website but all kinds of you know, let it be website videos, Presley's attending events, you know, having inside sales team reaching out to customers talking about the products. So, we have invested in marketing from day one is the first I would say important thing, because the great product is good, but you have to put it in front of the right people. The second thing which I would say, you know, happened because of these situations is we had been very lean, and very, I would say cost sensitive before spending $1 We were clear that what we are going to get out of it. And the reason I said it is very situational, because when we started we got a good traction, we were also thinking about even getting funding, but that's when the pandemic you know, came in because of pandemic we dropped the idea of going into funding because you know, everything was kind of disturbed. But that has helped us to go back and focus and how do we kind of remain lean what we learned in the pandemic has became our DNA forever even after acquisition now, our focus is even spending a single dollar we always think how this dollar is going to come back to us. So I think the second thing is about very ROI driven when we do the investment and third thing is we have accepted the fact is you cannot solve everything you cannot have every feature on day one, you will have things which are missing but what is important is having the right mindset to work with your customers understand their pain points, if customer needs a feature, work with them and tell them okay, this is going to come at this point. How can I help you right now? So from day one, we had been awarded as best for customer success. Even recently we did a customer survey and the best thing which came up is a customer success. Because you know in a global industry when you really don't you know what with each other in person and in the remote work Whether you're using software from someone you prefer that if you have a problem or if you have feedback, or if you have a question, how soon someone is available, how someone is able to understand your context and just not responding in a transactional way to your ticket. So customer success has been, again, in another focus area, I think these are the things you know, I will not say these are the decisions, but these are the very conscious focus areas, which we had kept throughout our journey has been very helpful to us. Because, you know, as a, as a product manager, product is never perfect on day one. And it's never perfect, actually, there is always something which needs to improve. But we are very keen and very responsive to our customers and very attentive to our customers.

That's great. I'm so glad to hear that. You talked about being lean, and how something good came out of the pandemic of you learning how to be lean, and you've kept that I'm, I'm really impressed that you've kept that afterwards. So I think that that's critical. I think so many times, especially in the tech world, people are just spending and they don't realize, if we put this dollar in the machine, how many are we going to get back? And really looking like you said, at each dollar, I think is critical. It's something I learned in my early days in startups of, you know, hey, what are we going to get out of this, if we're going to spend this what's going to actually happen? I think the companies who figured out if we're going to spend this we will get this are the ones who thrive, the ones who just kind of willy nilly throw money around. They're the ones who don't make it. And it's, it's very scary. So I really appreciated that, that you're doing that. I also love the customer success angle that you're taking care of your customers? Have you seen your churn rate be very successful? Because you're your customer success focus? And have you seen your customers love the product? And love the company more? Stick around more because of that?

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, because we are so connected with customers, you know, we are able to understand their pain points, all their pain points work through give this additional comfort. And this has been one of the most important factor in having John as late as possible.

I love it. So those are some of the good things you did? What were some of the mistakes that you made? What were some decisions that you wish you could have back?

Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, I think, Matt, because when something reaches to a good stage, probably no, it is really hard to think about the big mistakes. And that's the thing, you know, I'm trying to think. So, you know, I will not say mistakes as such. But but in journey, because in my previous, you know, previous roles where I was very focused on the product and a lot of products, I was very clear about we were missing on marketing, we were missing on sales. So I was very focused here. r&d and a constant evolution on technology, I would say we started little late in the vertex journey. It should have been, you know, there from day one, I think two or three years down the line, the you know, apprenticeship journey, we realized that we had to go back to r&d. So if I have to restart all my journey Vertec, I would make sure that the investment in the r&d and the new trends and the technology will be slightly more from the day one, which we eventually did after two and a half years.

Got it? Got it. So how do you see your company evolving and growing over the next five years?

That's a beautiful question. So, you know, in last five years, Matt, we have kind of, you know, put ourselves in front of everyone's travel ecosystem now knows us as an option. You know, we are there, everyone knows us. We know people can use us in next five years, I want to change this perception from you know, being an option to the number one option. Okay? So if today someone is going for a smartphone, I think iPhone is the number one choice, it's very clear, there is no doubt about it, no one is going to argue about it. We just want to be that iPhone of the mapping industry, that we become the number one preferred choice. People buy it or not, for reasons, like you know, cost or any other is fine. But we want to make sure that everyone agrees and feel we are the number one choice for customers. So we want you to take our product to the level we want to take our customer success to a level where we become a preferred option than just being an option.

I love that. And so, as a leader, are you making sure the whole team sees that vision and how do you make sure everybody's on the same page?

Yeah, so you know, I think that's that's the beauty being us. startup and being a SaaS company and we are small team, really, really everyone is a leader here. That means, you know, what happens is, annually every year when we start, we actually start with our financial goals. And then we start with our product goals. And then when we do and annual OpSite, with the entire company, everyone in the company, even the intern will come on stage and talk about what he or she is going to achieve in next one year. So really, really, all of our things are very transparent, where the goals and what everyone is going to do is decided by them in the overall ecosystem and overall goals. So we have such meetings quarterly review, to check the status against things. Whereas we have monthly all hands meeting where we talk about the same numbers. And we have seen KPIs, it is about accuracy of the mappings, it is about the percentage of the mappings, it is about the revenue, we have grown this, you know, this month, month on month, we only talk about those KPIs in all, all the groups very openly so everyone is aligned towards the same thing.

I love that I think it's so smart to be able to do that and get everybody focused towards the same goal. So this has been a lot of fun learning about how you guys have done this, Sanjay, what other advice would you give to early stage and new SAS founders who are getting started and want to follow your path to get to an exit?

Yeah, I think you know, so I would say no Getting started is the most important. So if you aspired of doing something, the only thing which is stopping you is you know, just not doing it. So I would say just start doing it. On the way you will find a way out. I think the only thing which you require for building a successful company is making sure you have the right leaders or right co founders and you build the right team. Ideas can be tweaked ideas can be changed. You know, but you know, right. If you have a right team, don't wait. Just get started. Things will follow.

I love it. Well, Sanjay, this has been really awesome learning about you. How can our audience learn more about you and Viva tech?

Be I think you know, me and even overtake both are very active on LinkedIn. So if you can follow or take on LinkedIn, as well as follow me on LinkedIn, that's the best place to be connected and, you know, be updated.

Okay, perfect. We'll make sure we put that into the show notes. And as well as in the description if you're watching on YouTube, but Sanjay, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all this. This has been great.

It was lovely, man. Lovely talking to you. Thank you for having me. Thanks a lot.

You're welcome. It was lovely having you here as well and everybody else out there watching and listening. Thank you for being here to once again, make sure you're subscribed to the channel and we are looking for reviews. If you think this is helpful. And all these episodes and these interviews are good, please review us and put that out there that shows other people that this is something that can help them as well. Once again, thank you very much for coming, and we'll see you next time. Take care, and

thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS. For more help on finding great leads and closing more deals. Go to Mattwolach.com