How ENACT SYSTEMS INC CEO Deep Chakraborty grew ENACT SYSTEMS INC to $8.4M revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is deep chakraborty he is an entrepreneur business leader currently leading in act an award-winning cloud platform that is for the distributed energy industry the company's on its fifth year with market leadership globally in the sector of software platforms for solar and storage deep are you ready to take us to the top absolutely okay so when you say global leader in this space how do you measure that we measured by a number of users customers and projects so an ex-platform processes over one and a half billion dollars of projects now for solar and storage across the world in 23 countries and um we have deployed over three gigawatts of projects we always measure in terms of capacity okay and is that historically over the past five years or just in 2021 uh the run rate is in 2020 since feb september 2020 we have uh process of one and a half billion and of course just to remind you we are a software platform we are not a developer we are not selling any hardware or financing anything we're just doing what we call the solar life cycle project management software and so that's really unique having a platform that's so active in so many countries so what does that mean since september 2020 you put 1.5 billion of solar projects through your platform what does that mean so our platform is unique it's a cloud software hosted on amazon used by both solar developers and installers as well as the end customer and what it does is automates the entire journey of the project so they can pick any address in the world design a system remotely generate signed contracts and then execute the project all tracked online and of course the end customer they're spending a lot of money on these projects you know to save money on the electric bills and as well as doing the green thing they're able to measure the benefit too for the first time in dollars so we project the benefit in dollars and then we measure it so we're really making it transparent for customers and providers to now do these transactions seamlessly using an independent platform that is you know the source of truth and so this platform has processed over 100 billion dollars of projects in the last 12 months and deep across how many customers so we have uh over 100 enterprises in 23 countries and thousand plus users users meaning people who actually log in and do work on it industry of course is a niche solar is not a massive industry but even in the u.s you know there's a potential 50 000 plus users for our platform and we've already crossed the first thousand what does the average provider pay you per month per year to use the technology to manage these solar installations and projects the average company you know this smvs are small and medium companies which is the majority of the market they're spending less than ten thousand dollars a year to use the platform and it's a you know user per month subscription model the end customer which could be a building owner a home might spend only 50 a year on the app a large commercial hospital might spend a thousand dollars a year because their system is much bigger when you look at your revenue over the past 12 months what percent came from the providers versus the homeowner wanting to track their energy usage and tax rebates and things like that great question so we actually launched with the providers uh first in 2015 and that platform is still 80 of our revenues the end customer app which is now on ios and android 2 that's less than a year old it's growing really quick but the revenues are 20 of the total because it's a new offering how many homeowners are on it so far or or larger facilities with solar installations yeah we have crossed a thousand homes last quarter and q3 and in specific markets you know specifically markets like california where we are in or even across the world like in delhi or in dubai the pockets of dense use because we have very active platform users and like for example in delhi now we have crossed 500 users on the platform in the city of delhi who have solar and it's growing rapidly because of the ecosystem we've built there so the 100 providers which is 80 to your revenue paying on average ten thousand dollars per year that would mean you're doing just on that side of the business about ninety thousand dollars a month in revenue is it accurate yeah i don't want to disclose our revenues but i will say that we are right now uh around a million dollar a year run rate in revenue and it's growing um rapidly especially the last 18 months so you'll break a million in terms of run rate by the end of the december okay and where were you exactly a year ago so we can calculate growth rate we were much lower probably like we've grown about 40 this year and so which is very uh great which is a great growth rate considering we haven't really invested much in the business we're still bootstrapped there's no venture investor on this we are not institutionally funded so you own 100 of the business no our employees do i mean every employee has equity in an act but together the founders and employees still own the company you have no institutional ownership how much of your esap pool did you try to set up i mean we're talking 10 20 to employees or more we have always done you know uh we have maximized the esab grants uh legally possible in the last five years but employees uh typically in the us have you know an annual esop cannot be more than fifteen percent of your holding and we have tried to maximize that so yes together the employees and founders own the majority of the company we do have those some equity investors this year we have announced that you know early stage sas investors family offices they're on our website we also now listed on start engine oh sorry so how much did you raise in equity we have raised almost 4 million dollars now but our cumulative revenue has been more than that so we're kind of leading by example revenue comes first so sorry four million you closed this year we have closed four million dollars of equity investment in nx systems since launch and uh of course the first round wasn't 15 which was announced in the 18 we got seed investors who took preferred shares and then we also got early-stage sas investors now uh in the last year who are helping our you know growth specifically break deep break this down for me so the sas investors this year how much did they put in uh we have raised 700 000 on sas investments i think you should go to crunch base it should have the exact numbers please don't quote my you know numbers on the interview i don't have them on the top of my head but crunchbase has all the exact details and on our website we have lists of investors also i understand but i i want to capture more of the pattern here right so so when you did the round in 2015 what like why couldn't you bootstrap the business and and how much did you raise from those family and friends or however you did it to get the mvp up uh we still uh so what's the question exactly again could you repeat that how much did you raise in 2015 to get the mvp live we raised a million dollars in uh 2015 may which was announced release and then we were probably the only company that has gotten a u.s government grants department of energy grants to develop a platform which is patented by the way it's a blockchain enabled platform and that in 17 so we could not have done it with just a million it's a massive platform now active in 23 countries same product but yes the government grants helped us and then we raise money in 18 19 and 22 make sure that we have always run away for growth because we've been hiring employees in the us as well as in india and some other markets so i see you raised 1.4 million in 2018 from mb ventures i don't see anything in 2019 though what did you raise in 2019 uh 2019 and 20 i would i will email it to you separately i think there's some disclosures out there reg d probably not all of it is on crunch based but i think you should all have it in crunch base if you have like a an account there if you well no no deep it's not because i'm in my research team looks at crunchbase obviously that's a public source that is not list there is no round listed under in inac systems in 2019 on crunchbase so you use start engine it sounds like to raise some capital in 2019 is that what happened no we just got listed in start engine last week and we are sec approved for start engine i think we have already raised almost 100k on start engine in two weeks uh it's a great way for you guys to spread the word you know individual investors never get a chance on these um let's say accredited rounds so we're seeing good traction there okay so so this year so start engines just now but going back a little bit you said you then raised you know whatever it's it's 1.1 million on convertible note here in 2020 2021. so let me give you what i'm reading of start engine so million 25 may 2015 then we raised 1.8 million may 18 and then we have raised 1.2 million between 2019 and 2020 it's also on crunch base arka ventures is our lead investor it was announced in january of 2021 arka ventures which is part of a billion dollar venture capital firm the early stage arm and then we also raise money from olympus capital uh it's also known so i think i think maybe this uh crunch base you have is a little old and i'll email this to you i know deep it's the exact same crunch base you're looking at we're looking at the exact same data okay...