GoComet Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2021)

hello everybody my guest today is gotham jen he is the co-founder uh he's sorry he's an experienced co-founder with a demonstrated history of working in the logistics and supply chain industry today working on go comet he's skilled in business planning product strategy operations management and sales he's got a strong pro he's a strong professional with a bachelor and technology major in computer science and engineering from iit delhi all right gotham you ready to take us to the top sure all right what is go comment and how do you guys make money all right so go covet is a logistics resource management solution we are an enterprise sas company that's great and and what do you so help help people understand what you deliver sure so we essentially solve the problem of a weakness and inefficiency in the in export logistics processes so just one idea give me an example of what that market is i'll i'll just give an example so export logistics is when any manufacturing company trans transports goods internationally and that is the big containers the air freight that we see for all the movement of the manufacturing companies and the agro commodities this movement is a this is actually this is a freight spend of a trillion two trillion dollars and dollars annually globally so this freight spend is almost all of it is happening on emails and phone calls right so this this is the industry due to the in the large companies face a lot of inefficiencies in managing these shipments right and that is what where we come in we help companies uh give a lot we help we give the companies a logistics resource management solution where their processes are digitized and hence the problem of opaqueness is resolved okay and how do you build so on average what are people paying you per month or per year for this the companies are paying us quarterly and the contracts are annually okay and how much are they typically the typical uh size for a company is approximately uh it's approximately fifteen thousand dollars to a hundred thousand dollars uh per annum okay it's a particular size okay that's a big range though would you say the average is probably fifteen thousand dollars a year the average is probably fifteen thousand dollars a year yeah okay got it so fifteen thousand bucks a year or twelve hundred dollars per month but they have to pay annually that's right okay so they have to be quarterly actually quarter okay so what is that that's like six hundred per quarter something like that that's right that's this is uh this varies a lot depending on the size of the company that we are dealing with well so tell me about that so so what are the pricing axes you priced against is the number of containers shipped or number of seats what are they they are the number of containers here okay no okay the number of shipments say that again in air shipments it's the number of shipments okay so air is number of shipments and then what would like an average like like your largest customer how many containers per month or per year are they sending uh our largest customer they are sending about um a hundred thousand ship containers a year oh wow and the smallest customer setting about how many a smallest customer is sending about 50 shipments a month which is approximately yeah 600 a year okay interesting and when did you launch the company what year we launched this company in 2016. 2016. that's great and how many customers are you working with today we are working with approximately 50 large enterprises so five zero or one five that's great okay so can i take 50 times the price point you just gave me means you're doing about 60 000 a month right now that's right congratulations that's great thank you what were you doing exactly a year ago in january of 2018 oh so we were uh one-fifth of the revenue so basically we have grown five times in the last one year okay so that means you're doing about 12 500 bucks a year ago now you're doing call it 62 grand uh that's nice growth thank you so much how are you getting the growth what growth channel are you using to sign up these 50 customers so ours is the direct uh direct point of sales with the large enterprises okay but to be specific the last like the first customer you had to hustle to close what did you do where did you find them how did you get connected cold calling all of our customers are obtained through cold calling and now we are starting to get uh references from old customers okay how do you get their phone number oh it's calling on the board line and finding about with the person on linkedin and then calling on the board line to get connected to the person pitching that this is what we can provide you this is how we have been helping other companies and hence uh after that the meeting is obtained in that meeting we we share our solution that is how we have been helping companies okay but be specific so the start of this is a linkedin search what terms are you searching on linkedin um actually you already know the companies that we have to target right so for example if you're talking the major uh we uh we have a list of the biggest exporters of uh any country right in that country you will see the top pharmaceutical companies top agro commodity companies uh which are companies like you can say om international sun pharmaceuticals which are the biggest companies of of the world right now in the in them you have to find who is the right point of contact right so that there you go to linkedin and you are able to find it probably see chief when a financial officer of bp or supply vp of supply chain once you find the name of the person you go to board line and you call or you send me an email that's great and how are you getting their email the email is uh mostly guest okay and how are you getting the phone number just from their website the phone number is obtained from the website yes that's what receptionist okay so where did you get this list from did you just scrape it from like a marketing website or something oh it is available freely on the on the google but what like what did you search on google just like top exporters in the us that's good okay and they're most your customers are agriculture or pharma most of our customers are pharmaceuticals chemicals and agro commodity companies interesting okay have you bootstrapped this or raised capital we have raised a seed round uh two years ago in the end of 2016. how much and that was that roundup was about 300 000 okay and that's all you've raised today that's all we have raised to date that's awesome i love that staying lean and mean okay now are you burning cash today are you profitable oh we are about break even right now okay and how many team members do you have we have a team which is uh 30 members strong thirty zero that's great where's everyone based uh we are we have actually five offices spread across three global locations so we have offices in singapore uh bangkok and in india we have offices in mumbai delhi and bangalore that's great okay so basically a remote team all spread out that's right that's great okay talk to me about churn have you lost customers actually retention is one of the biggest parameters for us the one thing important is that these companies they are each of them is doing all of the shipments on our platform since this is this is an lrm solution for them right secondly we have not lost any company once these companies are really uh they have their legacy processes once they start using the platform it's very difficult for them to leave the platform okay so net revenue retention annually is about what net revenue retention is about i would say 95 the 5 losses due to uh sometimes change in the structure of company or change in the export structure of the company okay so that's five percent kind of gross revenue churn per year do you have any expansion revenue or no oh we do have and uh that's actually starting right now so yeah no not really numbers on that for the past uh six months so you're just kind of turning on that on that's right okay very good that's good stuff and then um what are you spending fully weighted to get a new customer that's gonna pay you call up 000 bucks each for a year so uh our ratio of uh cac and ltv so that is about one is to five okay and what is what do you assume lifetime value is in dollars lifetime value of a customer well we haven't seen much of a churn uh right now right so it's it's it's uh still still uh going through that phase but we see that the lifetime years in terms of average should be five years okay so you're taking five years at fifteen thousand dollars a year fifteen thousand dollars a month five so seventy five thousand dollars is an average customer value for a medium level customer yep so if you're if you're saying basically your ratio is one to five there i can take seventy five thousand dollars lifetime value divided by five years willing to spend 15 grand to get a new customer that's right okay which means you get paid back in about a year we get paid back in india definitely that's great very cool all right now um of the team of 30 do you have any inside sales people do you have an inside sales model or no i'm not right now we only have a direct model where we have enterprise sales professional team okay now sometimes when people raised and they raised like two or three years ago it's a good time to ask them hey are you raising right now or selling to your number one competitor which one are you doing we are raising right now okay how much how much are you raising so uh it's still another wraps uh but we we should be publicizing it soon in a couple of months well sorry don't tell me what the actual term sheet says but but what do you hope that you raise are you talking like a million or 10 million or what so it's it's between uh two to five million dollars okay so so you want to raise and by the way don't don't say what you actually have like don't say what's on the term sheet i'm just talking about for your business in an ideal world you want to raise about two million dollars that's good okay and and again don't say what's actually on your terms sheet but what what kind of valuation would make you really happy to raise that two million on uh probably five x of that okay so and and how do you get to this so you're basically saying raise two million bucks on a 10 million pre-money evaluation that's right and how do you get to walk me through what's going on in your head how do you get to that oh so that is actually uh more of a you can say we have a plan on how we are going to expand we know the demand right it's it's pretty very interesting to see that the kind of product we have built uh even in southeast asia and middle east there is no product like that right uh which companies are using on mass right so it is a huge potential opportunity for us right and that that is what we are going to uh go for we know what is the plan we we have a successful working model of acquisition of companies we have a successful retention model companies are super happy with us and that is why we are we know that we can capture those markets and that is how we are we are arriving at a valuation that's great very good all right let's wrap up here gotcha with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book oh lean startup number two is there a ceo you're following or studying elon musk number three what's your what billing tool do you guys use i'm sorry what billing tool do you use oh we use uh zoho okay number four how many hours i sleep to get every night uh actually i'm uh i sleep a lot so eight hours that's good and what's your situation married single kids i'm single not married no kids and how old are you i am 25. i love that 25 all right and so last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew i'm sorry what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 oh uh so i wish i would be reading more i would be getting more knowledge from experienced people i would be networking with the mentors to help me develop faster guys read more go comment again freight and shipping management 50 customers that each pay 1200 bucks a month doing about 62 000 bucks a month right now in revenue up from 12 grand a month just a year ago they price based off number of containers shipped or if it's in the air it's number of shipments the way they got their customers they cold called all their customers they got a list of the biggest exporters from any country looked up in the vp of fine of supply chain or cfo on linkedin then hustled either call them or email them to ultimately close them they've raised three hundred thousand dollars their breakeven today hoping to raise two million bucks on call maybe a 10 million pre team of 30 all remote five percent gross revenue return per year no expansion yet but they're turning that on so 95 net revenue retention today spending 15 grand to get a new customer which they get paid back then uh obviously there in about a year all right gotham thank you so much for taking us to the top thank you so much it was lovely speaking to you