568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The whole industry has become really good at deal-making by just using Zoom. This is very much in favor of international entrepreneurs. You can now do deals globally just by using online tools.

Abinash Saikia: We thought that we would probably need to meet at some point. We were able to build good relationships. I had built a very good bond with the corp dev head. I joined his team at Quantum. We bonded well and that helped us be more credible.

Sramana Mitra: What about price negotiations?

Abinash Saikia: That was interesting as well. Your product gets tested very thoroughly, especially when you’re doing this remotely. We went through a thorough product testing phase. That was a month-long period. We were able to show them all the use cases and robustness of the solution. The testing phase could be post-negotiations.

In our case, we had done this prior to the negotiations. Once we had gone through this entire process, we engaged with the CFO. Negotiating the deal with a CFO of a NASDAQ-listed company was exciting. We started with the initial term sheets. We had to do a lot of back and forth. It was emotionally draining as well. You both have expectations. How do you meet at some point?

We had 15 people on our cap table. You have to have 15 aligned as well. That was quite interesting and challenging. I’ve always had good relationships with all the shareholders. I would just leave it to all the entrepreneurs as well. It’s important to have good relationships with your investors. You have to be very upfront with them. They need to trust you. We had that. Still, I had to go back and forth with a lot of investors. If you have 15 senior people, everybody had different expectations. We had to really work with everybody.

Sramana Mitra: Did you have an offer before you started this conversation with your 15 shareholders?

Abinash Saikia: I had taken some people into confidence. I had not given them a value, but I had a sense of what they were looking at. In general, I would typically chat with the shareholders every month or so. I had a sense of what people were expecting. With that, we had gone into the negotiations. Finally, we got to a stage where we could converge.

Sramana Mitra: Do you feel comfortable disclosing any metrics?

Abinash Saikia: No, I’m not supposed to. I’m proud of the deal primarily for three reasons. We had taken care of all the stakeholders. It’s not just the shareholders. They have gotten a pretty good return. We also made sure all our customers are well taken care of. All the commitments that we had with our customers are being taken up. That was one point in our negotiations.

Lastly, we wanted all the employees to be taken care of as well. We made sure all the employees get a sizeable hike in their salaries. From our end, we were able to give a good parting bonus to all the employees. We were able to do a good deal for all.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent and congratulations! Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn
1 2 3 4 5