And then there was light…

There comes a time in every venture’s lifespan when it needs to scale the mountain, round the bend, bell the cat, bite the bullet – or in layman terms: Start running on its own cash flow!

There is only one thing that I can say for this event: Its a proud moment, and an EXTREMELY liberating one. FYI: We arent there yet – but god willing, we will be there by end of next month. We eat what we reap. We start generating positive (monthly) cash flow. We have enough commitments from our clients to become operationally break even next month.

Its been a long journey – and could have taken much longer. It started when there was the ‘Inception’ of an idea in my head by a gent called Krishna Jha. Krishna is a partner at TelNet ventures and a previous entrepreneur with experience of building and exiting a business in the telecom space. I had met him at Proto and had interacted with him many times. He had come to our office a couple of months back and at that time, we were clocking Rs. 40K per month. Krishna’s advise was to triple the revenues – Bring it upto 120 K. His words were “Simulate a kick in your balls. Right now – you are running on the cushion of investment – Simulate a scenario that you dont have that much cushion.” The idea stayed with me – and morphed into a bigger hydra than what Krishna had suggested. Why some? Why not NO cushion?

We thought about the ways and means of enhancing revenues to become operationally break even and yet keep growing. We thought hard but not for long. We did only two things:

1. I went back to our investor (who had committed SGD 1Mn of which we had utilized 15%) and said with a lot of difficulty: “No more money please. We have decided to live off our own produce. No more ‘Khairat’”. I think the investor was a bit taken aback at first – it isn’t often that they hear the entrepreneur telling them that we don’t want your money any more. The fact that he appreciated it much more became clear when he made me a director on the board of Regional Airports Holding International Ltd. (RAHI) <– that’s another story.

2. We got out there and started gunning for business. Raised the prices, went back to our clients and thankfully our product was good enough for them not question the raise in prices – but rather they came out and said give us 10 times more! We obliged. One client went from Rs. 20K to Rs. 200K in one month flat. Next month – they want to double that!

We are still a bit away from complete operational break even, but the ‘feeling’ that I am already getting is one of sheer exhilaration – and frankly, I cant explain it enough in words. Its a mix of the bubbles in the stomach & the twitching smile &  the jump up high & the scream out loud feeling.

So here we are: Some extremely marquee names as paying clients. Currently integrating on top of a unified telecom platform in India. International launch as a VAS service on top of probably one of the most innovative operators in the world in 2 months. 3G launch on an Indian operator (signed, done – launch whenever it happens). Brought down the sales cycle from 5 months to 1.2 months – and focusing only on the VERY big clients. And a situation where we will break even operationally in a months time. With all of 9 extremely dedicated and proud people.

Its too early to start taking bows. Its too early to break out the bubbly (we will have a nice session the day we actually get to operational break even). It is actually time to start taking stock of the much harder road ahead. Time to think about scaling while maintaining your own cash flow and business. When someone asks me about investment – I say that yes, we are looking to raise funds. Not because we wont get there, but because with the right ‘kind’ of investment, we will reach there faster.

A reputed VC recently told me: “Thats quite a bit of progress for a year of operations”. My response was “Not enough. Not nearly enough”.

Watch this space!

M

We are moving on…

We are going through a fair bit of grunt here at Voicetap and continuously moving. Let me start at the top with the happenings at Voicetap thus far:

Getafixx and its progress thus far:

Since the time we launched Getafixx – our focus has not been on it too much. That is unfortunate, because it has got great reviews from its users. We now have 478 experts using the Getafixx engine and at last count a total of 1823 cumulative users (including the experts). Not bad given that we really havent done anything around it (no marketing / nothing) – but pathetic based on the fact that these numbers could have gone up tremendously had we focused on it.

To be fair, apart from demonstrating our commitment towards connecting you with experts directly – Our key objective to launch Getafixx was two fold:

1. Understand how people access / disseminate knowledge: Amazing experience. We have noticed peaks and troughs of knowledge sharing. What are the times that experts will take more requests? When will the users send in more requests? What type of a ‘profile’ gets more ‘Yes’, and which doesn’t? What are the searches happening on? Lots to go on…

2. Build up a base of experts who will get preferential treatment in all our future products. Like I mentioned – we didnt focus on Getafixx that much. There is a very rational region for not focusing more on Getafixx and the chat medium. Money. Moolah. The greenback. And the product that we believe has the maximum potential for quick validation and revenue…  (more on that later in the post)

While on Getafixx, we have received numerous posts on “whats in it for the experts?”. So that’s the other thing that will be launched soon – KEEP (the Knowledge Expert Engagement Program), and it promises to be good (especially for you guys who believed in us when we had 7 experts).

On the next product (Any suggestion for names guys?):

What can I say except that what we are trying to do is akin to trying to lift a weight of 1000 kgs in a snap, only on our little finger. There is a lot of grunt work that is being put in. Sales is going all out to meet the corporates with the demo product that we have (its still rudimentary), but the response has been overwhelming. Technology has given at least 3 48 hour stints in the past 2 weeks, and a 70 hour week has become the norm. We are hoping to ‘launch’ this product to the market in Jan – but will be opening up a beta testing program for our experts and users to give it a whirl starting the 10th or so of this month. (Could extend by a day or so – but nothing much more than that). So if you are interested in testing the pre launch product and are ready to provide us with constructive feedback / point out bugs – write in to v@voicetap.in: He will be coordinating the effort.

Naturally – each expert who signs up to help, gets a special gift of appreciation from Voicetap!

Parties:

They have actually dipped in the past few weeks. No more than twice a week – which is a tad low from our perspective, but then thats in our hands – and we aim to change that quickly.

This Saturday is an off for everyone at Voicetap. Everyone needs to catch up on sleep, on personal work, with family – with friends. Whatever. We will have the product internally ready by this Friday – and Saturday, we will sleep over it. Join us – Test it – Use it – make something really useful!

Mrigank