How Astrologyapi CEO Chandan Tiwari grew Astrologyapi to $504K revenue and 350 customers in 2018.

hello everybody my guest today is chandan tawari he is a technology entrepreneur with eight years of experience in product development and software architecture in the past he's worked with mnc's on embedding and e-learning products he's built an astrology website when in college and created astrologyapi.com in 2016 which we're going to talk about today chandana you're ready to take us to the top yeah okay what what does astrology api do and what's the revenue model how to make money from this thing yeah so basically it's a sas based uh startup focused mainly on to the astrological domain providing astrological algorithms and the content to businesses uh such as media companies or the matrimonial websites dating websites and apps so we actually collate all those data astronomical data and the algorithms and we provide it as an api so our business model is basically a subscription either monthly or the annual subscriptions and what do people pay per month on average for this uh so the average payment is around 120 to 150 dollars per month okay 120 bucks per month and you launched in 2016 right yeah the end of 2016 so we can say 2017 okay and what have you scaled today in terms of total customers using the platform uh yeah so we have around uh 2200 customers who are using it uh so basically around 1100 customers who are on to the either they are integrating or the system uh putting this uh entire thing into the place and we have currently full-blown 350 paid users paid subscribers okay 350 paid subscribers paying 120 bucks a month means you're doing about 42 000 a month right now uh yeah and where were you a year ago in terms of revenue monthly revenue uh so a year ago we were quite small uh like we were only having around uh if i can tell you it's around 35 uh paid users uh i guess so when we started we had uh so now just to be clear 35 paid customers at 120 would mean you were doing maybe five grand a month a year ago exactly that's interesting so so help me understand why like a use case of why people are paying for this so i can i can imagine my audience thinking wait why would people want to bring astrology information to their apps and websites things like horoscopes and predictions and matchmaking i mean give me a customer use case yeah so basically if you see the media companies so i'm currently based out of india's but our clients are actually all over the world now when you see the media companies they have their one category which is specialized dedicated to horoscopes and uh the astrology because uh like around 22 like the services around 22 percent of the traffic actually goes on to the astrological systems now instead of they are putting entire thing in house and getting the content writer or the astrologer to write the content and do the uh all those uh configurations by themselves on the software they actually outsource those to our apis so that we can actually help them uh get those things built and they can actually work on their users uh engagement and the popularity and not only for the astrological data and content and have you bootstrapped the company or raised capital uh no via bootstrap bootstrapped company and how many people now full time uh so currently 12 people full time that's two okay twelve and what's the breakdown i mean how many of them are engineers versus sales people or things like that uh so sales is only one and along with me so there are two people in sales and the engineers we have around six engineers and three content writers and everyone's based in india uh yeah everyone's based in india very very cool are you guys casual positive today are you burning money uh no we are cash flow positive it's a great place to be it feels good right yeah that's that's a good place now we are scaling uh so just an interesting fact that we have not yet spent anything on marketing um except your salaries yes exactly yeah are you looking to spend on marketing soon yes yes so now we are scaling it up so we have got some other uh apis or what you can say the features in place that we have studied the market since last two years and now we know what exactly the market product market fit would be and that's where we are going towards very cool so what will your first paid marketing test be what channel uh yeah so basically it will be we are basically looking out to have the content marketing and the google ads that's where most of our customers are currently coming right now and so to get a new 120 a month customer what will you pay in terms of fully weighted cac oh so it's basically uh we are paying around 10 to 20 dollars for a new paid account yeah well that works i mean that's one that's like you know one-fifth of what you get paid the first month so you get paid back the first month yep why not if that's working so well why not scale that why not spend you know a million dollars in that channel yes exactly so via bootstrap so we are initially like uh around six months back we did not have that much cash flow uh like we were not that uh great about the the about our accounts but now since we have and we have also added people in last like two three months earlier we used to be only five people and we have added uh seven more in the last three months uh so now we are looking to scale it up and we are also looking out uh to raise some funds how much do you want to raise uh we are currently looking to raise somewhere around 800 000 to 1 million and on what valuation do you hope to raise at uh somewhere around five to seven million dollars and how do you get five million uh it's basically our revenue and the potentials that we have uh that's that's that's how well it's kind of a rough calculation that we have done uh it's not an audited yet how do you when you talk to be like invest potential investors about this and and and this is not i'm not saying this to be offensive but people could see this as like a like a gag gift like a like a joke almost right it's like astrology and like you know is this like a real thing but i mean you're building a real business so how do you convince folks that this thing can go from 50 grand a month to 500 grand a month yeah so basically yes that's there like people are skeptical at first it's like astrology and what it to do with the b2b thing and the api part uh so it's at first uh building effect to get them to get them onboard about what we are saying but once they understand and once they understand the business model and about the potential that it has uh so it's a good thing like we can we can actually show them our last uh one year or one and a half year progress and what we have made uh so currently we are actually making around uh 150 million api requests on our servers like people are making 150 million requests per month oh wow that's incredible very good and chandon what about churn so what's your what's your revenue churn annually today yeah so churn rate is actually more than the average churn rate of any sas companies because what happens in case of astrological businesses like well what is the number though first tell me the number first uh so it's around eight to twelve your churn at twelve eight to twelve percent per month is obviously really high how do you get that down yeah yeah so basically to get that down we need to aware uh raise an awareness into our subscribers up to how how once they have integrated the apis how to actually put it into a campaign mode how to monetize this how to put this entire api around their services what they are offering so that's where the uh our businesses are actually lacking those uh combat the capabilities and wherein we are actually adding people to uh to make that awareness to create that awareness into uh the subscribers uh business models so that's how we can get those things down very good all right let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book uh currently i'm reading lean startup but the one thing is it's a good book number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now uh not studying but elon musk is a favorite number three what's your favorite online tool for building the company uh intercom is probably the best thing that we have um for how many hours of sleep to get every night uh seven to eight and what's your situation married single kids well i'm married uh this this year any kids no not yet not yet very good and how old are you i'm 30 30. last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew ah i would say like uh to go on to the intuition and taste take bigger risks guys take bigger risks he launched this company back in 2016 essentially an astrology api that news organizations might use for things like horoscopes or things like that essentially or matchmaking or hindu calendars or western astrologies right uh he's doing over 100 million api calls per month 350 customers paying 120 bucks a month so 42 000 bucks a month in revenue up from five thousand bucks a month just a year of ago cash flow positive bootstrapped with a team of 12 in india turns too high at 12 per month he's looking at bringing that down currently looking also at raising his first capital maybe 800k on a on a 5 million dollar pre-money valuation sean shandon thank you for taking us to the top thank you thank you nathan for your time