Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Was the product you developed acceptable within the Indian regulatory system?

Ambarish Gupta: Yes. We solved the problem for India. Most of the emerging markets have the same regulations, which is VoIP is not allowed. We spent our first year developing the first PSTN cloud telephony platform in the world. That was a big breakthrough for us.

But we ran out of money. So, I went back to the US to some of my friends in New York who had made good money in hedge funds We were able to raise convertible-backed half a million dollars and used that to launch a hosted EPBX product in 2011. Before that around 2010, we launched a fax-free email product called Super Fax. Once we had the platform, we could build any new products. We were able to launch multiple products like Super Fax and Super Receptionist, which is a fax, email, and hosted EPBX product.

Sramana Mitra: What was your customer acquisition strategy for Super Fax and Super Receptionist?

Ambarish Gupta: Initially, our customer acquisition strategy was just to call small businesses from the telephone directory. I remember it was me and two other call center agents. We would just call people up and tell them that if they need a fax number, we can provide a fax number for INR 250 ($4) per month or INR 3,000 ($60) per year, which was very inexpensive. That started selling. A lot of people in India wanted a fax machine where they can receive government orders. These were manufacturing companies, lawyers, CAs, and some travel agents as well. At 3,000 rupees a year, there’s not much money to be made.

In 2011, we launched Super Receptionist at 6,000 rupees ($120) a year where we give you a phone number that people can publish as their business number on their website and business card. We started selling that also over telephone. Then we realized that people are not really price-sensitive. So, we tripled the prices to 18,000 rupees ($360). Recently, we increased the prices by 50% to 30,000 rupees ($600) a year.

Initially, it wasn’t selling as much. It was a painful process to be calling 100 people and be able to sell one. We started putting Google Ads. We would receive inquiries and our conversion rate improved. From there, we grew and I remember hiring some hardcore sales guys. Today, the model has more channel partners. We have close to a thousand channel partners across the country selling our products.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta
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