Shanghai Evans Investment Management Limited

Interview with Mr. Kumar Tanmay, Founder | Inkredo

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Inkredo is in the business of creating an infrastructure for credit risk assessment that helps financial institutions (FIs) streamline their risk assessment capabilities. Currently, we enable FIs to make sense of messy financial data. Our algorithms extract data from various file formats and provide instant risk insights.

Script of Interview

Interviewee                                   Mr. Kumar Tanmay (KT)

Position                                        Founder

Company name                           Inkredo

Company website URL              http://www.inkredo.in

Interviewer                                  John D. Evans, CFA (JE)

Interview conducted on            1st September 2020

About Kumar Tanmay

JE: Super. Okay, Kumar, let’s kick things off and look at the first two bullet points together. Give us all a bit of a brief overview of yourself in terms of personal growing up where you live, and a little bit about your studies and your professional background up until this day.

KT: Yeah. So, my childhood has been in a boarding school. I was sent to a boarding school at the age of four. And that’s how my character has been built as an independent person. I learned to be an independent decision maker quite early in my life. I started traveling alone also, quite early in my life. I think I started traveling alone when I was nine or 10.

JE: Really?

KT: Yeah. So, you know, from school to my home during vacations, I used to travel alone. So, it just happened I loved traveling alone back then it made me feel more responsible, you know, more like an adult. I did my engineering from my hometown itself. It’s one of the top colleges over here in India. I did my engineering in biotechnology and back in 2003- 2004 it was just up and coming branch. And I took biotechnology intentionally because I had been coding for more than 10 years before taking up engineering. So, I knew a lot about coding and had already gotten bored of coding, so I wanted to take up something new. Right, then, in next four years, the biotech scene in India didn’t pick up as per expectations, I had a core job in hand. But during the summer internships, I realized that core job is not for me. So, knowing coding, getting into an IT company was the obvious choice after completing my engineering. That’s how it happened. I came to New Delhi in 2007 and since then I’ve been here. I started with Tata communication systems, what happened over there was I decided that this is my last tech company because I really wanted to get on to the management side of things. And within a year when Lehman Brothers crashed, there were some new startups coming up in New Delhi. And I got lucky to join and get started. It really worked really good for me. We were working, we were developing launch strategies for patented drugs in US, Europe and Japan. These were you know, top five EU, US and Japan, these were the seven geographies we were targeting. It was a pretty close-knit team close knit team of five people that pretty much shaped my career from there on because I got the hang of startups. I joined a couple of mobile startups before starting my own with my first venture in 2013. This is more like a Zipcar model where we were the first ones to introduce self-drive car rentals in India in 2013. we had to shut it down in 2015 because deep pocketed companies like Uber and Ola you know, started venturing into Indian market. We realized that the unit economies in self-drive rentals is in local transportation and not in outstation transportation. our numbers were heavily inclined towards outstation travel, more than 90% of traction or what was happening through outstation travel. So, you know, we knew that it will take a lot longer to achieve profitability, and we were not funded at all so I’d already been bootstrapping that company for one and a half years almost. Then I started with the second venture called ‘HelloMeets’, which is a community-based company, even that is a bootstrapped company, that company is still running, it’s more than five years long, completely bootstrapped. And I exited that company after one year of, building it up, because I realized that, this is something which I won’t continue for more than two years. And then Inkredo happened after that thorough research of, you know, spending a lot of time with people in the, you know, in the lower and moderate-income group. So, I actually spent almost six months of time studying their financial lives by you know, sitting in their shops, or, you know, talking to them on a daily basis, trying to understand how they are managing money without, you know, formal financial services, and that led to the, you know, to the birth of Inkredo what it is today.

JE: Okay, and so where were you before you move to New Delhi? I didn’t catch that. What part of India did you grow up?

KT: I was in eastern part of India in Ranchi. Ah, that’s where I did my engineering.

JE: Okay. And you moved to New Delhi in what year 2007. So, you’ve been there for 13 years now. Okay. Yes. You did a lot of traveling by your own. You’ve already talked about that and so you’re now on Inkredo. Is that your only activity or do you have sort of other projects on the side related or not related to Inkredo?

KT: No, we don’t have any side projects. We have another product within the company, which is called Inkrobo and so Inkredo analyzes bank statements, Inkrobo, actually extracts information from invoices. So, these are the two products we are working but our major traction happens from Inkredo only.

JE: Okay. But the two are closely related to each other. They’re not like totally separate businesses?

KT: They are within the same company. Two products in the same company.

About Inkredo

JE: Okay. Now, let’s turn and talk a little bit about your company, Inkredo. Give us a brief history, remind us again, when it was started, when it was founded? Was it just by you give, us give us a little timeline since its first started.

KT: Yeah, so I started working full time on Inkredo in December 2016. But we formally incorporated the company in May 2017. Those six months were involved in doing a lot of homework and spending time with my target group. In 2017 we started as a peer to peer lending company, targeting mobile shop owners, you know, in the outer peripheries of metropolitan cities. These mobile shops were not, you know, typical mobile shops who were selling Samsung or, you know, iPhones. They were selling Chinese made phones, it was a ticket size worth, you know, under $250. max. So we were targeting the shop owners to get them formally included into the financial economy by, you know, bringing them credit at a very, very low cost. So, we found that they were already borrowing from informal lenders at anywhere close to, you know, from 0.25% per day to 5% per day.

JE: Per day.

KT: Yes.

JE: Okay. Okay. Well, that’s interesting. So, it sounds like before you got involved with Inkredo, you had a lot of direct or knowledge of small business. Just remind me to what you said a couple of sentences ago. Not about the mobile shop. But before you said you also were working with some other small businesses for a period of time or six months. And what sort of businesses were those as well? Were they sort of related in further background for what you’re doing now?

KT: Yes. So, I was not formally working with them, I was spending time with them on a daily basis. So, these were mobile shop owners, these were informal lenders also. And these were and some of them were very, very small shop owners, you know, were fruit vendors or you know, vegetable vendors also. So, my six months was actually involved in, in, in understanding the financial lives of these people. How they are, you know, what are their sources of credit, how they are managing you know, their work life.

JE: Okay, now this this I’m going to delve in a bit deeper because this will be very interesting background for people. You’ve given us some interesting background about the company and particularly your experiences with all sorts of small companies, mobile phone operators, food vendors, and that stuff before. So that that’s very good background about what the
company is and what it’s focused on. So, let’s now turn to the second and third points. Tell us, describe the company currently, its facilities, number of staff etc. And who are any other members of the key team? And how did you come together?

KT: So, we’re based in New Delhi. And we have five members right now on the team working full time and so a good, distributed team. So, you know, two of us are in New Delhi, two of them are in Ahmedabad and one is in Pune. How did we come across, it’s just pure, you know, pure hiring process where we were looking for candidates at an opportune time and that’s how we got connected. Since then, we have been working together so now the oldest team member is almost as old as the company. Then, one of the team members before joining us full time was a consultant with us for almost eight months. The other two people we hired from Google’s developer group; of these five people, there are two girls. And we, we have two girls. So, you know, I’m very proud of the ratio of females. I never thought that we’ll have two girls in the first five team members.

JE: Okay. And okay, so that describes who you are now. And so, you said, there’s two in New Delhi, two in Hyderabad, and one in in Pune? Did you say that the fifth person was?

KT: Two in Ahemdabad.

JE: Okay. And the fifth person was in Pune. And so why are they separated? Are they doing sort of different functions in the different cities or?

KT: Yeah, so no, they’re not doing different functions, all five are aligned to the same goal. Yeah, why we never chose to be a distributed team or a remote working team. The circumstances made us so. first 16 months, we had an office, but we had changed our office thrice in those 16 months. And so, you know, fourth time, I didn’t want to waste time and energy into that one. we just tried, you know, working remotely for a month. It worked really well. We tried another one month, one month, so the first two months the whole team was, you know, very, very happy with that. And then we decided not to take over any new place. So, what happened now, this gave us access to talent all over India. We are not limited to one town now. And there were people who were really look into work from their own towns or their homes. And I thought we were lucky to find them.

JE: Well, that raises another interesting point about working remotely. So, I’ve not visited India, but the internet infrastructure at least to the cities, is there good bandwidth or all
businesses and homes connected up so that working at home or working is something a lot of people can choose to do?

KT: Oh yes, the internet facility in India is rocking, especially last three years, the penetration has increased many folds and we have the cheapest internet in the world. You know, getting an 100 Mbps connection is just a matter of a few rupees.

JE: Really, okay. Okay. So that that really supports your company it really supports also this distributed working model. You don’t have to all be in the same office, it’s set up for that type of working environment.

KT: Yeah, so under 100 Mbps internet connection is taken for granted. For every home now.

JE: Okay, that’s good to know. That’s still not the case in the UK I can tell you

KT: Okay by the way we just launched, not we, but one of the largest telecom service providers you know, Jio, you might know by now. Jio just launched 350 Mbps launch yesterday, free of cost.

JE: For businesses or for everyone.

KT: For individuals, not for businesses.

JE: Really Wow. Okay, so things are accelerating very quickly. That’s it. It’s good to know. Yeah. So, you’ve told us when the company was started, you told us about who’s working there, distributed? What currently is the ownership of the company, and how is it being funded.

KT: So, the company is majority owned by me. We have 25% in the ESOP, all the five members are part of the ESOP pool, and of which one has already exercised his options and other people have chosen to remain in the in the ESOP pool, their shares will vest in next six months. So, okay might exercise. Yeah, so the company has bootstrapped since day one, we have been customer funded. And we did raise some debt from my friends and family in in during the initial days. But after that, since November 2018, we have never put even a single penny into the company. We’ve been completely bootstrapped. So, equity wise we are not diluted at all. We did raise some debt.

JE: Okay, so now, companies that are not listed in developing companies, I categorize them into four sectors. One is pure startup, just developing no revenue generation. sector two is when they’ve got customers and they’re generating revenue, but they’re not profitable. Third is when they get their first year of profitability. And fourthly is when they’ve got some consistency and profitability and maybe looking to IPO. So, where are you in? Sort of stage two revenue generation are you getting close to being profitable?

KT: We are we are cashflow positive. So, you know, we made more money than we burn only during last three months in the COVID times that you know, we are burning more than what we are making just because of these economic situations. Be our financial statement for this year is still under progress. So, I, I have no, I’m not confirmed about the profitability part, but our revenue generation has been for almost two years now.

JE: Okay. All right. Are you looking to raise any funds at this time for additional growth or other purposes?

KT: Yes. Now we are preparing for fundraising.

JE: And how much are you looking for? Or have you decided that?

KT: I mean, anything up to half a million, I guess.

JE: US dollars?

KT: Yes, half a million US dollars. Okay.

JE: And that would be by offering some equity to an investor as opposed to more debt or something like that. Are you going to where are you going to look for that? Is there a big venture capital community in India? Are you looking maybe for a strategic partner to put some money into the company?

KT: We did try, try some strategic partnerships. It didn’t work out with our existing customers. The VC pool in India is very healthy. And all the biggest funds in the US are setting up their seed funds, you know, for example YC is quite bullish on India. So, you know, I think around 40 to 30% of their current batch consists of startups from India. So, does Sequoia has dedicated billion-dollar Seed Fund for India. And there are a lot of local VC funds, and, especially during these last two to three years, a number of founders have gotten good exits. Even they have turned investors or LPs in other VC funds.

JE: Okay.

KT: Yeah.

JE: So, if there’s a good Venture Capital community are there, also, I know this is very common in ASEAN and China and Europe. Are there a lot of incubators and has Inkredo ever been part of one of these incubator programs either here or in ASEAN?

KT: There are a lot of incubators over here, but we have, we have consciously not chosen to part of them. The only incubation of we have been part of is YC startup community. And that was in 2017. And recently, we chose to be part of F10, just for its network.

JE: Now, I’m interested in F10. And I remember hearing your presentation there. So, you’re more focused on India, F10 is got an office in Singapore, originally out of Zurich. So how did you come to get connected with F10?

KT: Actually, Lisa pursued me twice on an email. And so, I just thought, Okay, let me let me you know, make her wish come true. Let me just apply. Then then I got a positive response from F10. And then there’s no harm in talking to these people let me talk, and we could see some of the good corporates in their partnerships. So, we thought that if we could work with any one of them, then we are actually progressing two to three years in time. So, let’s take a let’s take a chance. And know these chances led us to F10. And now we realize we have realized and in fact, you know, the corporate partners also have realized that you know, we still have some distance to cover. So, but you know, I’m not saying we are only India focus, we still have customers outside India and there is a lot of opportunity in Asian and African countries. So, you know, we always have been working with one or the other leads in Africa. It’s just that something or the other has not fallen in place
right now, also, I mean, we’re in a big deal in the middle of a big deal with one of the companies in South Africa.

JE: Okay, interesting. Okay, so we’re all you’re already getting into our, our next point. So, just describe a little bit more of what your geographic target market is, and what your priorities in those perhaps different markets are.

KT: Yeah. So, the most complex market for us is India. The public infrastructure over here is developing very fast. We started three years back that time, there was very little public infrastructure for our business. Now, you know, especially in last two months, things have accelerated very fast. And in next six months we are going to be on our toes in Indian market. If there is any come with this any geography that is closest to Silicon Valley of 20 years back is India of today. Right. So, our primary market, our primary focus is going to be India, our current product, our current solution actually meets the needs of a lot of, you know, developing geographies outside India. That’s why I said Africa and ASEAN countries will be our sweet spot where from there we could generate good traction, offer value, but when it comes to building a solid product, India’s the opportunity for us,

JE: So, say in the next three years, and I imagine the growth potential in India must be huge, will you really have any time to dedicate resources to markets outside of India or is India going to be it for maybe 1 – 3 years because of the market potential there?

KT: Since we have been working on this for last three years, so, we know we all already have a lot of ground covered, we understand what are the leads in different markets outside India. Although we are in the middle of a big deal in South Africa, but you know, if things go well, we will get started in under 15 days. Our product is so ready for the for markets outside India, right now. And India is an ever-developing market. Every big company, small company is trying to cater to this market. And we are we are talking to a number of companies who want to work with us. Since, you know, there are too many things happening it’s very difficult to keep a track or you know, please each of the partners who are trying to work with us, so quite an exciting time to be in. Let’s see, you know which one works for us.

JE: Okay, well, I mean, using the term partners, you’ve prefaced the next question. So, let’s focus just on India, who would, might be some of the key strategic partners you would look to work with over the course of the next year are they customers, suppliers or other types of entities?

KT: Yeah, so, the public infrastructure in India has developed to an extent where every company in India could become a FinTech company. So, its customer base will have lending as a feature in their products. So, you know, let’s say you want to buy any product, you do not have money to buy that but you want to buy that you will be you will have access to credit within minutes over there. So, you know, your buying behavior will change from you know, from your own bank account to you know, maybe a credit product. So, every company in India will have its own lending arm to serve its own customer base.

JE: Will those companies that that are not regulated as banks that that have lending operations, will they be allowed to take customer deposits?

KT: No, they won’t be taking customer deposits. It’s just that the, the funding of that revenue will happen through a lending arm, the customer will have the flexibility to repay it later.

JE: Okay, so I remember growing up in North America, you had sort of nonbank companies that would lend to small businesses, Household Finance, AVCO, all of these, but they could not take customer deposits. So, they had to raise money, either through some sort of wholesale mechanism, or maybe if they were part of a big group, the profits of that group. So, it sounds like it’s a somewhat similar model that’s developing there.

KT: Yes, yes.

JE: Because that’s good, because I’m really curious about the I was curious about the deposit taking, because that’s what happened in China in 2014, 2016. All these sort of peer-to peer platforms, were able to take customer deposits. And of course, billions were lost because they were not regulated. And so, separating, who can take a deposit and have an insured versus who can lend is very important. And it looks like India’s following the more traditional model of North America where you don’t have that deposit risk to the general public.

KT: Yes, so you know, only 90 odd companies are allowed to take deposits, 90 odd, and these are systemically important companies where banks cannot reach to take deposits.

JE: Oh, so there’s 90 companies who are not banks. So, there are a few nonbanks that are allowed to take deposits, because they’re in areas that are not being served by banks. Yes. Are they potentially customers of yours, are you focusing on maybe some of the smaller entities?

KT: They are big entities. Yeah, they are in our target area. If that happens very good. Otherwise, you know, no problem. 90 companies is too small, but if that happens, very good.

JE: Okay, good. Okay, so let’s turn to the third section now, about the FinTech industry. Now, the question is give a brief overview of FinTech industry in India. Is it homogenous are there different sectors? But let’s also think about what particular sector Inkredo comes in, because FinTech is broad. Would you classify yourself more along the lines of a micro finance sector or how would you slot Inkredo into the financial industry?

KT: Oh, so, you know, if you look at you know, some of the developing economies, now, lending is accelerating in areas where, you know, people do not have formal credit scores. So, the only way to analyze their financial health is by determining the recent cash flows, and it’s called as flow-based lending. So, we are at the at the at that point, you know, where we are accelerating flow-based lending in geographies wherever you know, this data-based lending is possible. So, these are, you know, companies which who would like to lend small amounts initially with new customers and when they these customers repay these small amounts, the amount of loan keeps on increasing with as their repaying behavior improves. So, we are we are we would like to categorize ourselves as accelerators of flow- based lending in the FinTech ecosystem.

JE: Okay. And flow based is more precisely cash flow based you’re really focusing on looking at the cash receipts and payments, it’s very much a cash-based flow.

KT: Yes, that is one of the major things, but it could be any data flow, right? It could be a, it could be even, you know, what’s your telecom behavior? It could be even, you know, what’s the frequency of going to, you know, healthcare systems.  So anywhere, you know, there’s consistent data flows, it’s very easy to determine human behavior.

JE: Okay. It’s interesting. So, it’s not just about cash, although cash is probably at the heart of it and monitoring that. Okay. So, who in terms of running your business, who are your major suppliers? Are the, the inputs? I mean, is it is it technology or do you have some people in the back end that are you’re dependent on etc?

KT: No. So, the suppliers are our customers and themselves. So, our customers, as I said, you know, are loan service providers or lenders themselves. They collect data from the borrowers, that data access input in our product and you know, gives them the desired output. So, what once the customer subscribes to our product, there is no human intervention. It all happens within seconds. So, the suppliers are our customers themselves. When it comes to tech infrastructure, yes, we depend on cloud services.

JE: Okay, okay. Is there any possibility down the road since you’re developing all of this expertise is that maybe in some regions, you could potentially become one of these companies that are lending? Is that something that possible down the road or do you not consider that?

KT: Yes, so dream of every FinTech company is to become a bank one day. So, you have an option either become a service provider to banks or you become a bank. So, yes, you know, becoming a bank means you have trust of millions of people, you are trusted with the money of millions. So, maybe if things happen, you know, we could go that way.

JE: Okay. So, anything’s possible, as they say. So, let’s so now we’re talking about financial intermediation and, you know, maybe down the road you might become a financial institution of one sort. Regulation is a big deal in the financial industry. Are you subject to any great regulation at this point in time? Or is it just that your customers, the ones who are doing the lending, they are subject to all the regulation?

KT: A little bit, not much. The only regulation that we need to follow is that a every data that comes from an Indian customer must reside in India. That’s the only regulation we need to follow. Our customers in turn are directly regulated by Reserve Bank of India, which is the bank regulator.

JE: Okay, so it is just adhering to the country’s laws about data protection and data storage, which I guess everyone has to follow. So, there’s no real specific financial institution like regulation on you, that falls with your customers. Yeah. Okay. Very interesting. So, it sounds you’ve already said the FinTech industry is really big in India. So, give us a little bit of an overview of the composition. Is it still mostly small firms? Or are some of the FinTechs becoming quite large? What stage of the life cycle is the FinTech industry in India now?

KT: Oh, some of the FinTechs are huge, like you know, Paytm. It is almost around $16 -$17 billion company. It also has it has another arm in Japan, you know, they are called as PayPay in Japan. So Paytm is the biggest one, then we have PayU. PayU is a Naspers backed company. It’s an Indian company, but now it’s owned by Naspers. And it’s another, you know, I think close to $10 billion of valuation. And there are a number of, you know, other FinTech companies, which could be like, you know, now, we also have PhonePe, which is very similar to what Paytm does. You also have bootstrapped, large FinTech companies, which, right, that is Zerodha. It’s into, you know, securities trading community bootstrapped but you know, recently they did a, ESOP’s vesting round was when they valued the entity at more than billion dollars. So, they were distributing their own cash within their own teammates at a valuation of $1 billion. Also, things are really looking bright and a lot of second time entrepreneurs, right, who have gotten big exits in there first, first venture have turned out to be major different tech entrepreneurs now because they understand the flows of money in the system. So, you know, these guys are the ones who are dreaming big, who are doing big. We’ll see a lot of big FinTechs coming up in near future from India.

JE: What’s been the impact on the industry this year by COVID? Has it has it really made capital more scarce than previous years? Has it slowed it down? Or is this still sort of a general level of enthusiasm going forward?

KT: Yeah, so COVID has changed a lot when it comes to you know, consumer path. Now, the consumer side of the business are really growing fast. The B2B side of the businesses have really, you know, tasted negative growth and for the first time, maybe in their life cycle. We do not know how long this delay is going to last.
Especially, you know, the economy is contracting for the first time in last 40 years. So, yesterday, you know, the government announced that we’ll be contracting by almost 20% this quarter. So, the impact is huge, but we know right now the consumer companies are booming, they are the ones who are in real business.
Okay. Access to capital is very easy for them even, you know, venture capital and all are putting money on these consumer businesses.

JE: Okay, so the tap is not drying up?

KT: That is our viable consumer companies. Yeah, it’s drying up only for B2B.

JE: Okay, interesting. So, in terms of your direct competitors, are there lots of them? Are they small competitors? Do you have some big competitors? Who’s sort of your core competition and where do you fit into that competitive environment?

KT: We do not have many competitors as of now. There are two big competitors who did, you know, buy some of our competitors in last two years. So, you know, the competition right now is not huge because people believe that, you know, the public infrastructure, the new public infrastructure will diminish the opportunities in the market. But you know, we as a company or even our big competitors, we are quite bullish about the new infrastructure because of the use cases we have determined. So, it all depends upon, you know, the entrepreneur how, you know, resilient one is, or you know, how to go through these difficult times. I think it’s more about the mindset of the entrepreneur, you know, how to swing through these difficult times. So, opportunities that are there, I’m not at all worried about you know, what’s going to happen because of consolidation? In fact, we were in the middle of a couple of acquisition offers last three or four months. We’ve turned all of them down.

JE: Okay, good. So, what is the sort of general business or revenue model that you have with a customer? Is it like a consultancy contract for a period of time or pay as you go? What is the nature of the contract?

KT: No, it’s not a contract. It’s a subscription based – we have annual subscriptions and half yearly subscriptions. So that is the consistent way of creating revenues for us. It’s not consultancy base. So not as a as pay as you go, is not that at all.

JE: And so, the charging system, it’s, it’s based on the number of customers they have or the number of data requests or how is the revenue aligned to a specific action?

KT: Ah, so, you know, earlier it was you know, based on number of customers they had. Now, you know we as a company we have experimented with pricing a lot. Now, we have moved on from, you know, number of customers model, because our customers always came back to us whenever they were setting up that to optimize their costs. So, we have removed any bar on number of customers, now, it’s purely monthly subscription, you grow infinite, you know, you would still be at the same subscription per month every year.

JE: And that’s independent of the transaction volume?

KT: Yes.

JE: Okay. That’s very interesting. And what about sort of, maybe we can leave it to the case at the end, but maybe you can give us sort of a specific example of a contract, sort of when discussions started, did you have to go through some proof-of-concept approval? And do you have to provide training, give us an example. You don’t need to mention any names just so people get an overview of sort of the whole situation.

KT: Yeah. So, the sales cycle can vary anywhere from, one week to one month. This usually happens, usually happens with small companies, they don’t need much testing to integrate our product. It’s the bigger companies who need to do a lot of testing. There is no training required to use our product. We made it very, very simple, very easy to use, just because you know, we all are team members do not have any kind of domain experience before joining Inkredo. So, our experiences are developed based on our own experiences, whether we would like to use this product if it were in the market. So, we developed very simple interfaces for it. So, there is no training required. And what is the next question?

JE: Yeah, just sort of the timeline of a specific example. So, you’ve said that maybe a week or a month beef between initial conversation and then contract, and then is there some sort of period where you’ve got to sort of integrate your systems together to get things operational, before it’s actually working for the customer?

KT: Yeah, so we have reduced that friction, what we’ve done is actually given a free hand to the customer to test our product at any point of time. They can test the product without contacting us by right away going to the website. Just start using the product, once they’re happy with it then you know we also get to know who’s using the product a number of times it means that you know they found something interesting. So, we try to give our customers the entire freedom to take a call and it reduces our effort also to negotiate you know what they want to get.

JE: Okay, so if the customers start adding up quickly, are you going to need to add a lot of staff or is this something that you can grow a lot just with the existing five people?

KT: Ah, no, we’ll have to add some staff because we are quite customer obsessed company. the way our product has grown is because of constant communication with our customers. Till late I talk to our customers on a daily basis. Is there something to talk about, talk about the product with them. So, customer support will increase with the number of customers, but when it comes to infrastructure, we will, we will have to change, what works for our first 10,000 will not work for next, you know, next 100,000. So, the infrastructure needs to be constantly updated as we scale. So, that they might be more skills to upgrade that infrastructure. But I, but, you know, it won’t require as much staff as you know, as we scale

JE: Okay. And, and business development. I mean, you’ve just said that you can see who’s trialing it online. But do you need to hire more business development people or do you work through channels, independent operators, how do you get out to all reach out to those different parts of the country?

KT: Yeah. So, till date, we have not at all done any kind of out-bound sales. Trust me, 100% of the sales in last three years have happened inbound. Customers have reached out to us, then we have started the discussion. Going forward, we want to grow fast. So now we are developing systems in place where we could do outbound sales. So, we are developing marketing channels right now. So that, you know, the lead generation funnel improves a lot by the time you know, this slowdown comes to an end. So, that’s how we’re planning right now. So, yes, you know, we will be requiring business development team in the future.

JE: Okay. Very interesting. Okay, so that that covers most of the points here. I’m going to sort of finish off with one sort of very open-ended last question. So, you know, let’s say three or five years’ time horizon, I can see there’s huge growth potential in India and probably elsewhere. What do you see your long-term relationship with Inkredo? Is this something that you want to be sort of managing for a very long time? Is it something that you hope to IPO at some time? Do you see that it might be acquired? What is sort of the longer-term role for Inkredo and your involvement with it?

KT: Yeah, so you know, it’s never gets easier as we grow, it never gets easier. It’s only with hindsight, you know, we feel we really get to experience the excitement, you know, when they’re saying the story never gets easier. When it comes to thinking about the future of Inkredo, what I’ve realized is you know, that this might be my personal opinion because this is this is totally out of my experience. I’m not a visionary guy. I lose sense of my present if I think a lot about the future, and whenever we have lost sense of present we have, you know, faced consequences. I just want to, you know, be driven by customers rather than vision. So that’s it. So, as long as we are talking to customers, we will remain driven by the customers and that will determine where we actually land up. IPO, etc. you know, whatever happens, it’s a really good ambition to have. I do have that ambition, but there’s no plan for it yet.

JE: Okay, so just take it one day at a time, let the company grow and be profitable and take it one day at a time.

KT: Yeah, if you’re saying, look, if you look up most of the, you know, a lot of good companies like AWS. AWS was never planned, it happened, right. They were solving their own problem. And today it’s going to be another trillion-dollar company under Amazon. Or take iPod & take iPhone, right? Maybe we never imagined Apple or a computer company to become, you know, firstly become an entertainment / media company and then you know becoming a telephone company and today it does everything. So, it’s all about being driven by the customer understanding what they need, and, you know, developing products for them. So, that’s why, you know, I believe that being in the present is more important than being a visionary. Now, I respect Elon Musk. I respect Jeff Bezos, for whatever they’re doing. I think they have come from the future. They already know what to do. But if you look at Elon Musk history, you know, x.com or paypal.com, I don’t think they met their vision, but still, you know, those were one of the steppingstones in building Tesla and SpaceX.

JE: Very good. Very good closing comments. Quite philosophical to give people a perspective on you.

End.