How Blue Sky Analytics Raised $1.2M at a $7M Valuation and Signed 8 Customers for Its Satellite Environmental Datasets (Interview with Co-Founder Abhilasha Purwar)

Introduction and What Blue Sky Analytics Builds

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey folks. My guest today is Abhilasha Purwar. She's a Fulbright scholar, Yale alum, having ten plus years of work experience in private equity, big data analytics, product development, environmental policy. She's now building blueskyhq.in, which is helping, large brands play in the dataset space using satellite data and AI. Abhilasha, you ready to take us to the top?

Abhilasha Purwar

00:21>> Yeah. Sure. Let's go for it.

Nathan Latka

00:22Alright. So this is sort of a big idea here. You have some good examples on your website about forest fires in India and quantifying those. Help me understand what you're building.

Satellite Data, Forest Fires, and Environmental Datasets

Abhilasha Purwar

00:29>> So we take satellite data, large volumes of it, about 30 terabytes plus and ground sensors, and we use this data to give more spatial and temporal resolution. So for instance, the forest fires that we have in India, you have in California, Siberia, Spain, Greece, everywhere on the planet, and we just don't know how much fires are happening, how much are the greenhouse gas emissions. All of this information is needed by electric utilities for planning for future,

00:55>> by climate insurance, by banks and everybody for making decisions, especially as we have the frequency of forest fires or any extreme climate events rise up in the coming ten years.

Who Are the Buyers

Nathan Latka

01:05And who are the buyers, Abhilasha? Are these governments?

Abhilasha Purwar

01:09>> No. So it's majorly infrastructure companies because they have to take care of all of this large infrastructure that is supporting our life in the face of climate change and its insurances and investment firms.

Nathan Latka

01:21Okay, got it. So insurance investment firms, when you say infrastructure companies, can you name one or two real ones?

Abhilasha Purwar

01:26>> Electric utilities, for instance. If you're an electric utility, you face forest fires, you also face the danger of your infrastructure causing forest fires. So it's like a very, very important thing. Mean, even like for instance, home insurances, in the year 2021, the forest fires in California affected 40 times more houses than the last ten years of fires combined. So You really see how this problem is growing exponentially. And then there's a lot of greenhouse gas emissions

Beyond Forest Fires: The Full Environmental Data Spectrum

Abhilasha Purwar

01:55>> that come from forest fires. And the other thing is with bluesky, we don't just focus on forest fires. We focus on not all environmental data, whether it's air pollution, water pollution, carbon emissions from industries, carbon emissions from forest fires, the whole spectrum of environment and climate data.

Pricing and Average Contract Value

Nathan Latka

02:11Interesting, Abhilasha. And and so what might an electric company pay you per month or per year to access your dataset or your software?

Abhilasha Purwar

02:19>> So our datasets go anywhere from like $10,000 to like a million dollar depending on the resolution. For instance, if you want something with one kilometer square resolution, it's cheap. But if you want something with like, you know, 100 meter resolution, it's expensive.

Nathan Latka

02:33Okay. And so it's $10,000 a month or a year?

Abhilasha Purwar

02:37>> A year. It can go anywhere from $10,000 a year to, like, $1,000,000 a year.

Nathan Latka

02:42What would you I understand that's a massive range here, but what would you say the sweet spot is? Is $10,000 a year a good average?

Abhilasha Purwar

02:48>> See, I really can't say the sweet spot because it depends on resolution, right?

Nathan Latka

02:53I get that, but if you take all your customers, all your revenue divided by all your customers, you can get an average.

Abhilasha Purwar

02:59>> I think it'd be good to say that we do 100 ks a year.

Nathan Latka

03:02Is it good? Okay. Yeah. Okay. And if someone's paying you 100 k a year, what resolution are they probably getting? Is that like 10 kilometers, 50?

Abhilasha Purwar

03:09>> No. No. No. No. You get more resolution with that. Get like 300 kilometers, 400 kilometers.

Nathan Latka

03:14Yeah. Got it. And also

Abhilasha Purwar

03:15>> depends on what is the dataset. Right? For instance, if I'm doing like water pollution monitoring, it's very complex monitoring. So it's more expensive. Air quality is cheaper because it's like cheaper modeling. The science or the engineering that's needed behind both of these models is like different.

One-Time Snapshot vs Continuously Updated Datasets

Nathan Latka

03:32Interesting. Okay, got it. Are people Are they paying for a one time dataset, a snapshot, or are they truly recurring?

Abhilasha Purwar

03:40>> No. So our dataset is not static, it's dynamic. So once we deploy our algorithms on the cloud, that dataset is being generated at a temporal frequency of that particular category. It could be daily, it could be once in two days, it could be weekly. Usually our frequencies, temporal frequencies for everything is less than once a week. So, sorry. You get like either daily or once in two or three days.

Nathan Latka

04:04I see. Give me more of the backstory because this is fascinating. When did you write the first line of code for this?

Founding Story and Early Days

Abhilasha Purwar

04:09>> So we started in January 2019. We're going to finish three years. We started in my living room actually just there. Me and my brother and two of our first engineers and we were all literally operating out of my savings because I used to work at a private equity firm in Connecticut before this. So we were just chilling on a computer table, eating pizzas and writing code. And we got interested in satellite data because it's growing very

04:34>> exponentially, both the number of satellites that are going in the orbit and the resolutions that they capture. It's same to our iPhones, you know, the resolution you can now zoom your iPhones by like 6x. This wasn't happening like five years ago. And that's the same thing with satellites. So we are able to get snapshots of Earth all the time for different locations, for different parameters. And we clean that data, crunch that data, make sense of all

04:57>> of this huge volume of the data that comes down. And we put it for climate action because we really need to know what's happening on our planet to be able to save our planet.

Splitting Equity With Her Brother and Flipping the Majority

Nathan Latka

05:05And Abhilasha, did you and your brother split equity fiftyfifty on day one or who kept more?

Abhilasha Purwar

05:09>> No. I think we are like one so it's just basic rules of founders that there has to be one final decision point. So you never split equity fiftyfifty. One person takes more majority and the other person takes less.

Nathan Latka

05:21Alright. So how much did you take?

Abhilasha Purwar

05:24>> I think I took the majority, but then we flipped last year because my brother initially started. He like, Oh, I'm going to help you for two months. And then he was like, Oh, this is so exciting. There's AI and cloud and APIs, and this is SOTEC. So he's my CTO. He's like, Okay, so this is a technology company. And I think we flipped our equities last year. So he's the majority shareholder now.

Nathan Latka

05:44Got it. So you just sort of issued him more options, one year cliff for your vesting, and now he's a little more.

Abhilasha Purwar

05:49>> No, we are founders, right? So for founders, it's different because your brother and sister, just like, it's like, hey, you just take like 10% more.

Nathan Latka

05:56Are you guys the only have you raised capital or do you bootstrap?

Seed Round, Grants, and Valuation

Abhilasha Purwar

05:59>> Yeah. No, we raised capital. We raised a seed round last year for about 1,200,000 and we have gotten a lot of grants and a lot of prizes like AI innovation prizes. So it took us up to like, I think $800,000 or something. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

06:11Uh-huh. And so when you did the raise last year for 1,200,000, did you do it on a safe or price round?

Abhilasha Purwar

06:18>> We did a price round.

Nathan Latka

06:19Oh, right out of the gate. Why'd you make that decision?

Abhilasha Purwar

06:23>> I think, you know, it depends on different markets. In The US market, you can do 1,200,000 of SAFE, but in the Indian market, you know, it's not that easy. Like, usually the rounds get priced. Also, first time Founder problems, you know, we don't know. You don't know better. Somebody's coming like, oh, I'm gonna invest millions. For climate change? Oh my god. Know, when she started, they were like, oh, you should sell a nonprofit.

Nathan Latka

06:46So the valuation is totally dependent on your ability to tell a great story and sell the vision. So what valuation did you end up raising at?

Abhilasha Purwar

06:54>> I think it's something around 7,000,000. I I have to look again.

Nathan Latka

06:57Okay. And any plans to raise now where you can stay bootstrapped for a while? You can stay capital efficient for a while?

Abhilasha Purwar

07:03>> So we are capital efficient because we are like, you know, we are we are just a tech company of about 20 people, completely remote. So mostly it's engineering and data talent, but we are planning to raise more capital and actually flip to Netherlands because it's a very exciting domain for like space data and like climate change. So we are looking to raise about 5 to $6,000,000 more and just flip it over the, you know, in the

07:26>> next year beginning.

Customer Growth and First Customer Xiaomi

Nathan Latka

07:27Tell me a little bit more about customer growth. Tell me, how'd you get your first customer?

Abhilasha Purwar

07:32>> Oh my God. So we initially made the dataset and we thought that nobody would care about it, like nobody. And then the largest mobile company in India was like, oh my God, can we take your data and integrate it with like millions of mobile phones in India? And that was so exciting because, you know, we literally spent first seven months listening to people telling us, hey, air pollution, that should be done by governments or nonprofits.

Nathan Latka

07:54This is Xiaomi, by the way?

Abhilasha Purwar

07:55>> Yeah, that is Xiaomi. So they took our data and like, you know, our APIs, the hits went from 10,000 to like a million like overnight. Also, our API gateway broke because we didn't imagine that much amount of like customers, that much amount of users taking interest in environmental data. Even today, the idea that Nathan would want to know how much is water in the reservoirs in the town that he lives in is very bizarre. People are

08:20>> like, oh, Abidone's gonna pay for it. But I really feel that as the years go by, like three years, four years, five years later, climate data is going to be extremely valuable.

Customer Count and Why ARR Is Still Under $500K

Nathan Latka

08:30Yeah. I mean, you're seeing this in California right now. I mean, it's insane. Okay. So that's how you got your first customer, that that big telecom company. How many customers are you working with now today?

Abhilasha Purwar

08:38>> I think we have about eight to 10 customers now, different sizes, different now. I'm not even a sales team anymore, so I do not know much of information. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:46No. You're good. So can I take, like, eight times a $100,000 average ACV? You guys are doing about $800,000 in terms of run rate right now?

Abhilasha Purwar

08:54>> I don't I think you should I think you'll have to go down a little lesser because it depends. Some customers are nonprofits and they are not that, like they don't pay that high. We give them high huge amount of subsidies.

Nathan Latka

09:04I see. I see. Are you guys past a a 500,000 in ARR at this point? Do you know?

Abhilasha Purwar

09:10>> No. No.

Nathan Latka

09:11Can you break it this year?

Abhilasha Purwar

09:13>> Probably. So in India, our cycle is in March, March 2021. So the the financial cycle is not January to January, March to March. So I we have six months left to go.

Nathan Latka

09:25I see. So do you think over the next six months, you can break a mill a 500,000 run rate?

Abhilasha Purwar

09:29>> That is what you're hoping. We are really, really trying very hard for it. We have some, like, weak customers that we're trying to work with right now. So, like, you your big name clients essentially, you know? And if we are able to crack one of them, then we will cross 500,000.

Nathan Latka

09:42Mhmm. When I look at your website, I look at your customer logos. I like, I just feel like you guys would have customers that are like I mean, didn't you say you had customers that were paying, like, 1,000,000 per year for dataset?

Abhilasha Purwar

09:52>> There are customers there are datasets that we are pitching for 1,000,000 per year to different data different customers,

Nathan Latka

09:58but you have to closed.

Abhilasha Purwar

09:59>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:01Oh, I see. Got it. Okay. I'm just saying, yeah, because you bill off number of API hits. You have very good utility based, like, upsell metric because it's based off resolution on on kilometers. I mean, I feel like you guys should be closing enterprise deals like crazy. Right?

Abhilasha Purwar

10:13>> Well, we are really so one of the things is that we are trying to get more expansion in The US and Europe because that's where most of our customer base comes from. At the moment, we are a small team, only three people two people in New York and one in Netherlands. So we will be expanding out and placing more people in these geographies in the next two to three months.

Nathan Latka

10:31Yeah. Wait. Sorry. I thought you said you had you had 20 people fully remote?

Team Structure and Remote Operations

Abhilasha Purwar

10:34>> 20 people fully remote, out of which 17 is in India and three is outside of India. So we have two in New York and one in Netherlands.

Nathan Latka

10:40I see. But they're everyone's full time.

Abhilasha Purwar

10:42>> Yeah. No. Everyone's full time. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:44I see. I see. I see. Okay. Cool. So how are you I mean, with that many employees and you're still early on the revenue side, how are you managing burn right now?

Abhilasha Purwar

10:52>> So one of the thing is that when you're I think between America, Europe and India, the capital is very different. So for instance, in India, you can get like a lot of talent. Can also live a very high standard of living at a much different cost actually. So the cost of running a startup like us in The US and New York, we're probably like 10,000,000 a year. But for cost of running a startup like us here

11:13>> is about 1,000,000 a year.

Nathan Latka

11:15So what are your total headcount expenses per month right now?

Abhilasha Purwar

11:19>> I don't know. I don't think I can also review this information to you.

Nathan Latka

11:22Why not?

Abhilasha Purwar

11:23>> I think it's like a little more confidential, right?

Nathan Latka

11:26Well, I'm not asking for what you pay yourself or an individual employee, but generally speaking, the show is really about helping SaaS founders. And if there's clear arbitrage on developer talent in Pune or Bangalore, etcetera, you know?

Developer Talent Cost Arbitrage in India

Abhilasha Purwar

11:36>> There is a huge arbitrage on the developer talent. Like for instance, we I would say, let's say thirty thousand dollars is something like, you you can get really, really good Senior engineer. You can get senior engineers for like coding amazing stuff for $30,000. You get nothing in The US for $30,000.

Nathan Latka

11:52Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So 20 on the team, how many are engineers?

Abhilasha Purwar

11:57>> I think we have about eight people in engineering team, five in the data team, and then rest is all the other teams.

Sales Strategy and Founder-Led Enterprise Deals

Nathan Latka

12:06I see. And then why did you you mentioned you're not doing sales anymore. Most founders like that you hear general advice is, the the founder should really do the first million dollars of sales. Why did you stop doing sales?

Abhilasha Purwar

12:14>> I I focus a lot on the marquee client. So I chase after one client and rest of the team chases after all the clients. Like, I go very much like, I'm gonna close, like, one big name, Morgan Stanley right now in the next six months. So I have like some like, you know, individual one big client that I'm chasing after right now.

Leaving Private Equity to Start Blue Sky

Nathan Latka

12:33I see. What gave you the It sounds like you came from a private equity firm in up in Connecticut or the Northeast. What gave you the confidence to leave that? I imagine it was a cushy job, cushy salary. What gave you the confidence to leave that and start this?

Abhilasha Purwar

12:43>> Well, actually, you know, I think over time, it was you know, my boss was very, very encouraging. He was like, just go for it. If you fail, then just come back and join it again.

Nathan Latka

12:53Which firm were you with?

Abhilasha Purwar

12:54>> I was in a firm called Golden Capital based out of Stamford, Connecticut.

Nathan Latka

12:58I see. Interesting. Okay. Was it cushy or they weren't paying you enough so it was easy to quit?

Abhilasha Purwar

13:03>> No. It was pretty cushy. Actually, the other thing I was really interested in doing a PhD in economics on climate change induced financial depression. And I was working with Professor Gary Gordon in Yale. So I'm a Yale graduate in the master's program. And I really, really wanted to do that because I was obsessed with the great depression in the early 1930s. And I really saw a parallel coming in 2020s. So that was like my whole thesis.

13:30>> And then instead of doing that PhD, my professor was like, well, you know, this is a good company because climate risk is going to be a very big sector for a private company. Why don't you go that? And if it doesn't work out, you can always do a PhD. So I have a PhD in Yale, a good job in private equity as backup. Also coming back and working with my brother has been so much fun. I

13:52>> think it was the best call ever.

Rapid Fire Questions and Closing

Nathan Latka

13:53I love that. Okay. Let's wrap up, Abhi, here with the famous your famous vibe. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Abhilasha Purwar

13:59>> My favorite book? Oh my gosh. I love this book called The Worldly Philosopher by I'm forgetting his name. He's a it's a book about a bunch of economists and how they thought about the world.

Nathan Latka

14:11Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Abhilasha Purwar

14:14>> Oh, yeah. Lots of CEOs. But I do really like the guts of Elon Musk. I mean, I do not completely follow him. I'm not a fan, but I really love the fact he takes a problem which is so fucking impossible. I'm sorry for my French. So impossible. And, you know, climate change is the most impossible and the most difficult problem. So seeing him go head to head with everybody saying you're going to fail is something which

14:38>> does give a lot of courage.

Nathan Latka

14:39Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building blue sky?

Abhilasha Purwar

14:43>> Notion. Notion. Notion, guys. If you're not using Notion, if you're on Google Drive, please come to Notion. Google Drive.

Nathan Latka

14:49Did you switch?

Abhilasha Purwar

14:51>> Yes. Completely. Like, you know, in 2019, my brother was convincing me to join Notion. He was one of the first 100 users or something. And I was like, no, no, no. I can't use this tool or something. Like, I'm gonna do Google Drive. And we had a big fight also. But now now I'm the biggest proponent of Notion on, like, Twitter, every platform.

Nathan Latka

15:09I love that. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Abhilasha Purwar

15:12>> I take eight hours of beauty sleep, man. The girls gotta sleep.

Nathan Latka

15:15I love that. And what's your situation? Married, single? Married, single, kiddos?

Abhilasha Purwar

15:20>> I was single for the last four years, which was a very, very bad side effect of being a founder. I was kind of annoying, but I recently started dating. Actually, my first crush from 2008. So it's kind

Nathan Latka

15:32of But not married yet?

Abhilasha Purwar

15:34>> No. Okay. No kids.

Nathan Latka

15:36Right? No. Okay.

Abhilasha Purwar

15:38>> And how can I ask mean mom?

Nathan Latka

15:42I ask I'm not saying go have kids. I'm just curious. And Abhi, can I ask how old are you?

Abhilasha Purwar

15:47>> I'm 31.

Nathan Latka

15:4831. Last question.

Abhilasha Purwar

15:49>> What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

15:52>> What's something I wish in my twenties? Oh my God. I wish

15:59>> actually, I don't. I think my twenties are pretty good.

Nathan Latka

16:02It's not something you would change, it's just something you wish you knew, it's not a regret.

Abhilasha Purwar

16:06>> Something I wish I had gotten on the path of software development just a few years earlier. It was something I was just mightily scared of, even though I had so many friends around me who were doing it. And even though I myself was like, you know, a computer, I used to code when I was 17 years old actually. And I got like really good grades in computer science, but I don't know why I stopped doing it.

16:29>> I don't know why I stopped doing it. But it's been super exciting to pick it back. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:33There you have it. Blueskyhq.in. Their customers are electric utilities, insurance companies, and infrastructure companies who pay them for data, satellite data. They upsell based off the resolution, based off kilometers. They have customers paying as little as called a $100 a year chasing million dollar a year deals as well. They just passed eight paying customers and called about a $500,000 run rate, hoping to break $500,000 in terms of run rate in the next six months as they

16:56look to scale, raised $1,200,000 last year at around a $7,000,000 valuation. A a Abi and her brother team brother sister team working together growing this bad, but we'll see what happens next. Abi, thanks for taking us to the top.

Abhilasha Purwar

17:08>> Thanks so much. Have a good one, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

17:12One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

17:37Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

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