Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So what precisely was the gap? Is it a pricing gap, was it more expensive, or was it a support gap? What was the gap?

Abhinav Girdhar: The gap was mostly on the support side of things and also servicing in terms of how do we go about serving these customers. The US companies mostly have a ticketing platform; there was no live support to assist these small medium businesses.

So even if they pay you $7, they want services worth $7,000 in the very first month. That is where we saw the gap. We were also one of the customers of such a platform, and we were not very happy. That is what triggered our need to create something of our own.

Sramana Mitra: Could you name the companies that you were going up against?

Abhinav Girdhar: There were quite a few. There was a company called App Maker, which we acquired. There was Infinite Monk, which we acquired as well. There’s another company called Apps Bar that was doing pretty well at that particular point. Some exist even now. One of them is a European company called Good Barber.

There were about four to five companies that were operating at that point. We acquired quite a few of them.

Sramana Mitra: They were all self-service app builders?

Abhinav Girdhar: Correct. They were all Do It Yourself (DIY) platforms. The idea started with Wix. Wix became very successful in terms of websites. So everybody wanted to replicate what Wix was doing in mobile app. That is where the idea basically started.

Sramana Mitra: So this 10,000 registrations that you got at launch time, productwise, were you capable of servicing that interest?

Abhinav Girdhar: Because of the exposure we had in the new media, there was no problem in servicing. I already had about 200 people working for me even at that point.

Sramana Mitra: But you needed people to service them? You said it’s a DIY platform.

Abhinav Girdhar: When I talk about servicing, I’m referring to these users wanting to get their app into the app stores like Google Play and Apple App Store. That was pretty complicated at that point, so they needed some hand-holding in getting the accounts created on Google Play and Apple App Store and in submitting the app to the app stores in order for them to go live.

So that is where my team came into the picture and supported them, but as you rightly said it was a tech touch platform. So there was very limited hand-holding for users who hadn’t created an app or who were not on a paid subscription model. But once we started the paid subscription. At that time, the SaaS terminology had just started.

Sramana Mitra: In 2016, SaaS terminology was in full blast. We started covering SaaS in 2008, so in 2016, SaaS was in full blast.

Abhinav Girdhar: Okay. I hadn’t seen a lot of SaaS. It was all services to me. We thought Wix is doing something similar. Mostly all these companies that I was talking to had a hybrid sort of model. They had a DIY model where they were doing a subscription plus professional services model as well.

Sramana Mitra: Yeah, the same model. How much were you charging for the SaaS part of it – the pure monthly subscription?

Abhinav Girdhar: It was about $7 a month.

Sramana Mitra: $7 a month and to do the hand-holding or human hand-holding? Were you charging extra or were you just giving it for free?

Abhinav Girdhar: Oh, that was all included in the bundle.

Sramana Mitra: Included in the $7, wow! Was that profitable?

Abhinav Girdhar: The main objective was not to get profitability but to have traction. That’s what we were trying to generate, and it actually worked out pretty well for us. In the very first year, we were not profitable definitely, but eventually after the second year, we gained profitability.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie
1 2 3 4 5 6 7