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Valuation · 2022

$200M

2024 Revenue

$25M(Est.)

Customers · 2022

1.7K

Funding

$30M

Team

210

Founded

2011

HiverhqHiver Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

Hiver is a help desk software platform built natively on top of Google Workspace, allowing customer support teams to manage shared inboxes, assign emails, and resolve customer queries directly inside Gmail. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Bangalore, India, with the majority of its roughly 120-person team based there.

As of May 2022, Hiver serves approximately 1,700 business customers and was tracking toward a $10 million annual run rate, having roughly doubled revenue from the prior year. The company raised a $22 million Series B from K1 in early 2022, valuing the business at approximately $180 million pre-money and $200 million post-money.

Nitesh Nandy, co-founder and CTO, described the company as capital efficient, having scaled from a $1.5 million run rate in 2018 to its current trajectory on a $4 million Series A and a $4 million venture debt facility before the Series B. Net dollar retention of 102 percent and a three-month CAC payback period on Google Ads underpin the unit economics.

Last updated

HiverhqHiver Revenue

Hiver was tracking toward a $10 million annual run rate as of May 2022, with co-founder Nitesh Nandy confirming the company had nearly doubled revenue compared to one year earlier. At approximately $800,000 per month in revenue at the time of the interview, the implied annualized figure sits close to $9.6 million.

HiverhqHiver Revenue GrowthReported revenue / ARR over time · latest figure estimated$0$6M$12M$18M$24M$30M20112013201520172019202120232024$0$1.5M$9.6M$25MSource: GetLatka.com interview on May 26, 2022 with Nitesh Nandy
YearMilestoneSource
2024HiverhqHiver Hit $25m revenue in October 2024Estimated
2023HiverhqHiver Hit $18.9m revenue in November 2023Estimated
2022HiverhqHiver Hit $9.6m revenue in January 2022Watch[1]
2021HiverhqHiver Hit $4m revenue in January 2021Watch[2]
2018HiverhqHiver Hit $1.5m revenue in January 2018Watch[3]
2011Launched with $0 revenue

The company reported a $4 million run rate in 2021 and a $1.5 million run rate in 2018, representing consistent multi-year compounding. Year-over-year growth as of 2022 was approximately 100 percent. Nandy attributed the growth to a combination of new customer additions and seat expansion within existing accounts, describing expansion as a significant lever in the overall growth mix.

Growth tactics in 2022 centered on Google Ads as the primary paid channel, supplemented by heavy investment in blog content, guest posting for organic SEO, and lookalike advertising. Nandy noted that the company ranks as the first non-Google organic result for the keyword phrase "help desk for Gmail" and that organic traffic from content is a meaningful contributor alongside paid acquisition.

HiverhqHiver Valuation, Funding Rounds

HiverhqHiver reached a $200M valuation in 2022, set during its Series B round.

HiverhqHiver has raised $30M in total funding across 3 rounds, most recently a $22M Series B round in 2022.

HiverhqHiver Capital Raised & ValuationCumulative capital raised and post-money valuation by roundCapital raised (cum.)Valuation$0$0$50M$7.5M$100M$15M$150M$22.5M$200M$30M$250M$37.5M2011201320152017201920212022$200MSource: GetLatka.com interview on May 26, 2022 with Nitesh Nandy
YearRoundAmountValuation% SoldSource
2022Series B$22M$200M11%Watch[1]
2021Venture Debt$4M$180M2%
2018Series A$4M--

Founders

Niraj Ranjan

CEO

Nitesh Nandy is the co-founder and CTO of Hiver. He was 38 years old at the time of the May 2022 interview. Nandy has been responsible for the product and technology vision of the platform since its founding in 2011 and described scaling the platform from the first customer to thousands of customers.

Niraj Ranjan is the co-founder and CEO of Hiver, confirmed by the company roster and by Nandy during the interview, when he clarified that it was Niraj who appeared on the Nathan Latka show in 2018, not himself. Niraj provided the 2018 data points including the $1.5 million run rate and the $115 average revenue per user figure at that time.

Net worth was not discussed in the interview. A rough estimate based on Nandy's co-founder status and the approximately $200 million post-money Series B valuation would depend on his ownership percentage, which was not disclosed. No GetLatka estimate is produced here given the absence of that figure.

Ganesh Shankar

Member Board of Directors

Ganesh Shankar is listed as Member Board of Directors at HiverhqHiver.

Q&A

QuestionAnswer
What's your age?41

Customers

Hiver had approximately 1,700 paying business customers as of May 2022. The platform generates between 300 and 400 signups per month across both the Google Workspace Marketplace and the Chrome App Store, with that figure including both free and paid users.

Pricing runs from $15 per seat per month on the entry-level plan to $59 per seat per month on the highest tier, on a per-seat monthly subscription model. Nandy confirmed that a typical account has 10 to 20 users, while larger accounts can exceed 100 users. At a midpoint of roughly $30 per seat across a 20-person team, Nandy agreed with the host's framing that the average customer pays approximately $500 per month, implying an ARPU of roughly $500 per month in 2022. This compares to an ARPU of $115 per month reported by co-founder Niraj Ranjan in the 2018 interview, representing a roughly four-to-five times increase that Nandy described as intentional and driven by product investment.

HiverhqHiver serves 1.7K customers.

HiverhqHiver Business Model

Hiver operates on a per-seat monthly subscription model with plans ranging from $15 to $59 per seat per month. The company's customer acquisition cost on Google Ads is approximately $1,600 per customer, and at an average monthly revenue of $500 per customer, the implied CAC payback period is approximately three months, which Nandy confirmed.

Net dollar retention was 102 percent as of May 2022, reflecting expansion revenue from existing accounts outpacing churn. Nandy described net MRR churn as approximately negative two percent, meaning the installed base is growing in aggregate even without new customer additions. The company monitors product usage signals and proactively contacts customers when engagement drops to support retention.

Profitability was not discussed in the interview. The company described itself as capital efficient, having scaled to near $10 million in annualized revenue on a total of $8 million in equity and debt prior to the Series B, with the new $22 million raise directed primarily toward accelerating marketing and sales spend rather than covering operating losses.

Point-in-time figures shared on the GetLatka podcast, each linked to the exact moment it was said on camera.

Customers (2022)

1,700

Nitesh Nandy: We have close to 1,700 businesses globally using the product.

Watch

Average revenue per user (2022)

$500

Nathan Latka: So $15 to $59 a seat, if we sort of take something in the middle at $30 a seat times a 20 person team, is it fair to say the average company might pay you 500 or $600 a month? Nitesh Nandy: That is right.

Watch

Customer acquisition cost (2022)

$1,600

Nitesh Nandy: We spend close to around 1,600 to get a customer from Google. Nathan Latka: Okay. And is that just on Google Ads? Nitesh Nandy: That is on Google Ads, right.

Watch

Net dollar retention (2022)

102%

Nathan Latka: 102% net dollar retention. So it's a sticky tool as they look to continue to build and grow and double down on marketing and sales.

Watch

HiverhqHiver Employees & Team Size

Hiver employed approximately 120 people full time as of May 2022, of whom roughly 45 were engineers. The majority of the team is based in Bangalore, India, though the company began hiring across India more broadly following the COVID-19 pandemic and has a small number of employees outside India.

HiverhqHiver employs approximately 210 people as of 2026, including 25 sales reps that carry a quota. It serves 1.7K customers that rely on its solutions.

HiverhqHiver Team GrowthReported headcount over time0501001502002502011201320152017201920212023202400210210Source: GetLatka.com interview on May 26, 2022 with Nitesh Nandy
YearMilestoneSource
2024Reached 210 employees (October 2024)
2023Reached 210 employees (November 2023)
2023Reached 210 employees (September 2023)
2023Reached 173 employees (July 2023)
2023Reached 193 employees (January 2023)
2022Reached 120 employees (January 2022)Estimated
2021Reached 79 employees (December 2021)
2021Reached 79 employees (November 2021)
2021Reached 120 employees (August 2021)
2020Reached 88 employees (November 2020)
2020Reached 88 employees (June 2020)
2019Reached 99 employees (December 2019)
2018Reached 58 employees (December 2018)
2018Reached 36 employees (August 2018)

Frequently Asked Questions about HiverhqHiver

What is HiverhqHiver's revenue?

HiverhqHiver generates an estimated $25M in annual revenue.

Who founded HiverhqHiver?

HiverhqHiver was founded by Niraj Ranjan.

Who is the CEO of HiverhqHiver?

The CEO of HiverhqHiver is Niraj Ranjan.

How much funding does HiverhqHiver have?

HiverhqHiver raised $30M across 3 rounds.

How many employees does HiverhqHiver have?

HiverhqHiver has 210 employees.

Where is HiverhqHiver headquarters?

HiverhqHiver is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States.

Compare HiverhqHiver to the industry

HiverhqHiver operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for HiverhqHiver in each sector below.

Full Interview Transcripts

$10m revenue founder uses debt to get leverage in $22m Series B for help desk softwareMay 26, 2022

[00:00] Hey folks, my guest today is Nitesh Nandy. He's the CTO and co founder of Hiver, a help desk built for Google Workspace. He has been driving the product and technology vision of Hiver and has scaled the platform right from the first customer to thousands of customers who use the product now today. He is passionate about building products which are used and loved by people globally. Nitesh, are you ready to take us to the top? [00:19] >> Yes. [00:19] That's good [00:20] stuff Alright. So tell me a little bit about Hiver. So when you say help desk for Google Workspace, maybe give an example of how customers are using you today. [00:30] >> We have close to 1,700 businesses globally using the product. [00:36] Give me an example of one of them, how do they use you? [00:40] >> Typically, customer support teams would say for example, there is a travel vacation rental company and they would be servicing their customers through an email channel when the customers write to them and they need to respond and resolve their queries. So Hiver lets them set up that shared mailbox where they can write to and they can respond to the customers and resolve their queries like a typical ticket management but built right out of Gmail. [01:13] When I open up Hiver on Google Workspace Marketplace, I see you've got 70 reviews, you have over 270,000 downloads. Is this your main distribution channel? [01:25] >> There are two distribution channels. We have the Google marketplace as one of the channels. The other channel is a Chrome app store. You can install Hiver as a browser extension and then proceed and use the product from there too. [01:40] And how many signups are you getting per month from these two sources? [01:47] >> We get close to around 300 to 400 signups. [01:52] Per month? [01:54] >> Yeah. [01:55] And that's free or paid? [01:58] >> This is including free and paid. [02:02] Interesting. And I guess take me down the funnel. So what do you know that a new company has to do in the first day or two to increase the chances they convert to pay? [02:11] >> Sure. So it is very important for the products to become valuable as soon as possible for the onboarding customer. That would mean they should see value immediately. We help the customers to get the first win as quickly as possible, which is setting up their shared mailbox and ensuring that the first email comes in. And they they can assign that email to an agent and see how the complete process works. Once that flow is done that is [02:46] >> a big win for the customer and then we start onboarding the higher more advanced features on the product which of exposes more value to them gradually. [02:58] And what are these customers today, what do they pay you on average per month to use Hiver? [03:04] >> We have different subscription plans. So we start from $15 per month per user seat and we go till $59 per month per user. Typical business might have maybe 10 to 20 users, but it can even be bigger accounts where we have more than 100 to 100 users on the same account. [03:27] So $15 to $59 a seat, if we sort of take something in the middle at $30 a seat times a 20 person team, is it fair to say the average company might pay you 500 or $600 a month? [03:36] >> That is right. [03:38] Okay. And that's up a lot because I don't know if you remember this. I had you back on the show in 2018. Do you remember that? [03:45] >> That might be my co founder, Niraj. [03:48] Ah, okay. [03:50] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [04:13] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [04:37] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [04:59] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [05:25] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if [05:47] you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click [06:03] on get your valuation here, [06:05] and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. [06:12] Alright. Let's jump back into the interview. I'll have to go look that up. But if you remember back then, what he or you told me was that your average ARPU was only $115. So you've almost four or five x what the average customer is paying you per month. Was that intentional? [06:28] >> Yeah, that is right. And that is intentional. We have invested a lot on the product to take it to that place. And that's definitely helping us. [06:37] Now 1,700 paying customers at $500 a month would mean you're doing about $850,000 a month in revenue. [06:43] Is that about right? [06:45] >> It's more or less in the same ballpark. [06:48] Okay, do you think you can cross that this year 850,000 a month by December? [06:54] >> Yeah, we should be. [06:56] How are you funding the business? Did you decide to bootstrap or raise capital? [07:01] >> We have raised capital recently earlier this year. [07:05] >> But we are fairly independent in how we operate. All the money that we are raising is going into funneling our marketing efforts. [07:15] And help me understand what that raise looked like, how much you decided to raise? [07:21] >> We raised 22,000,000 in the last term. [07:25] And that was your series B? [07:27] >> Yeah, that's right. [07:28] And why did you need the capital? Obviously, to give up equity, there's dilution there, why take on another investor? [07:35] >> Because there is an opportunity to grow faster and for that we need money capital. So there is a big market out there, we have a very good product market fit, something that customer loves. There is a huge opportunity to grow faster and this is the reason we went ahead raising more money. [07:54] Tell me what that opportunity is. You mentioned pouring money into marketing and sales. So do you know what it costs you to get a new $500 a month customer? [08:02] >> Yes. So [08:06] >> the whole idea is to move the complete [08:11] >> funnel faster. That would mean you need more number of leads entering the funnel per unit time per unit month. So we wanted to have more leads entering the funnel every month on month. And for that to happen usually your cost to acquire per customer would increase, it will not be as optimal as it would have been before. Because you are competing on the same AdWords, same keywords bidding on the same words. So you would need more [08:44] >> money if you want to increase the number of leads entering the funnel And that was the whole idea that we need to increase our budget push harder there and get things moving. [08:54] Paint that strategy for me. So you have 20,000,000 extra dollars, where are you going to spend it? Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, where are you going to spend it? [09:03] >> It's a mix of many things. But yeah, primary focus is Google ads for us. [09:09] And so how much do you have to spend to get a lead from Google? [09:13] >> We spend close to around [09:18] >> 1,600 to [09:21] >> get a customer from Google. [09:26] Okay. And is that just on Google Ads? [09:31] >> That is on Google Ads, right. [09:32] Okay. [09:33] So regular Google Ads on Google Ads and you spend $1,600 to get a $500 a month customer? [09:39] >> Yes. [09:40] Okay. So that's obviously a good payback, right? That's a three month payback. Any other strategies you plan to use besides Google Ads? [09:49] >> We go heavy on content. So you would see that we produce a lot of content, we do a lot of blog posts, guest posting that is also part of the strategy. A lot of organic traffic also comes in [10:06] >> through all the blogs and the guest posting that we do. [10:11] Is there a particular keyword that you optimize for that brings in a lot of your traffic? [10:16] >> We focus on help desk for Gmail, Google workspace. That is something which is very, very targeted for us. [10:25] So if I type in help desk for Gmail in search, you guys should rank pretty high. [10:30] >> Right? So, yes. [10:31] So I'm seeing obviously Google's organic listings and then obviously you guys are running ads there and then yeah, you are the first, you guys are the first non Google listing and then there's Front and a bunch of others that are competing with you. [10:48] >> That is true. [10:49] Is that who you see your biggest competitors at Front? [10:52] >> Sorry, come again. [10:54] Is that who you believe your biggest competitor is? Would it be Front? [10:57] >> To some extent, yeah, because the approach that they have taken is somewhat similar. But we have used Gmail as our canvas and build the product on top of that. [11:07] Yeah, are there any downsides to that? [11:12] >> There are definitely a lot of advantages. But from a downside standpoint, we are limited with whatever Gmail allows us to do on interface and on the product front. And we have to be very, very creative in solving the same problems that might be much easier for us to solve. But this also gives us a lot of advantage on what is already pre built on top of Gmail, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. [11:41] And Nitesh, obviously spending $1,600 to get a customer, you want to keep them as long as possible. So what is your churn today? And how do you try and improve that? [11:50] >> Our churn is pretty good. We have close to around minus two percent net MRR churn at this point of time. What we do is we try to keep and ensure that customer is engaged on the product very, very well. Wherever we see the usage dropping off which we keep driving throughout the product, we get in touch with them and then try to see what is happening and try to retain them. So we do this directly from [12:18] >> the product as well as a team which tries to keep track of the activity of a customer. [12:25] That makes a lot of sense. Now again, guys and you're right by the way, was your co founder, I had him in 2018, Niraj, right? [12:32] >> Yes. [12:33] Yeah, I had him on. He gave a great episode. He said back then you guys were just breaking, as of 2018, about a $1,500,000 sort of run rate. If I look at your numbers today, 1,700 customers, we already talked about this 800 ish thousand a month. I mean, sounds like you [12:49] guys can break sort of 10,000,000 run rate this year. Why did When you go out and raise $22,000,000, you raised it from K1, which is a private equity firm. They're known for being pretty founder friendly, meaning if you guys wanted to take secondary, you could. Did you guys take any secondary? [13:07] >> No, we didn't. [13:08] So all the 22,000,000 went on the balance sheet? [13:11] >> Yeah, more or less. [13:14] Why did you make that decision? Why not try and ask for a secondary and get early liquidity for you and some early employees? [13:21] >> We had a very small secondary, but because the number was so small, it's literally negligible. So we wanted all the capital to go into the company. And that was the primary reason. [13:31] You mean like under $1,000,000? [13:34] >> Yeah, that is very, very small. [13:37] Well, guys, what's impressive about your story is you've been very capital efficient. You raised a 4,000,000 series A back in 2018 to scale up past 5,000,000 ARR. And then you raised 4,000,000 in debt last year to buy some runway. Explain to me why you made that decision? What was it like raising debt and how do you use it? [13:54] >> See, we wanted to have some money to do some experiments that we wanted to show before we go for Series B And we got those debt for very, very good terms. And then we decided on picking that up using that to funnel our marketing show some good progress before we go for Series B. So that worked out for us very, very well. And I think it was a good call at that point of time. [14:21] You say very, very good terms for an entrepreneur listening right now considering doing the same thing. What terms would you consider very, very good for debt? [14:30] >> I would say first it's like a pool of money and you get charged for only the money you end up using and not the complete pool. So that definitely helps. And any interest rate which might be say under 10% rate that I think is fairly reasonable from a debt standpoint. [14:54] Very cool. All right. So that makes a lot of sense. You're now scaling up. [14:58] You're doing just help us understand growth a little bit. If you're doing about $800,000 a month today in revenue, do you remember what you're doing exactly one year ago? [15:07] >> We [15:09] >> have nearly doubled how we were one year back. [15:13] Oh, wow. So you were doing like 300,000 [15:15] or $400,000 a month a year ago? [15:17] >> Yes, that is right. [15:19] Wow. Okay. That's incredible growth. Did most of that growth come from expanding current customers, getting them to buy more seats or was it adding new companies altogether? [15:27] >> It's combination of both. For us, the expansion is a big lever and that adds to a significant growth of the complete growth that we get. [15:37] Amazing. Well, look, you guys are building very efficiently. Most folks when they're raising a series B are selling about 10 of their business. Is that about how much you guys sold? [15:49] >> Somewhat in that ballpark. [15:51] Did you feel like it was a fair valuation? [15:53] >> Yeah, yeah, very much. [15:55] Okay. [15:56] So just for context, if [15:57] you sold 10%, it would be something like $180,000,000 pre money, 200,000,000 post money, something like that. [16:04] >> Around that ballpark. [16:05] And why did that feel fair to you at the time? Obviously today markets are crashing, public stocks are crashing, everything's crashing. You closed at the perfect time. [16:14] >> See, one of the reasons why we liked talking to K1 and we thought they would add a lot of value when they come on board [16:23] >> and especially the markets we were operating in particularly we are based out of India, the complete team. So we thought that was a fair valuation and the type of team we are bringing on board that would be very helpful to help the business propel forward. [16:40] And how many folks are on the team full time? [16:43] >> We have close to around 120 folks at this point of time. [16:47] >> 121. [16:48] And how many engineers? [16:50] >> Close to 45. [16:54] Now, Nitesh, have you been able to hire all those engineers in India? [16:59] >> More or less. We have a couple of folks who work from outside India, but most of them are from India. [17:05] Which city Bangalore, Chennai, Pune? [17:09] >> Post COVID we started hiring all from all over India. But still the primary workforce is based out of Bangalore. [17:17] Bangalore. Okay, I feel like that's where all the SaaS companies are. Bangalore, Bangalore, Bangalore. [17:21] >> That is true. [17:22] All right. Good stuff. What a great story. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's the last book that you read? [17:30] >> It's a book called Soul of Money. So it talks about what is the purpose of money and how should you think about utilizing money for your growth? [17:45] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [17:49] >> Not really. [17:50] Okay. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Hiver besides your own? [17:58] >> Retool is a good tool that we use very, very commonly in product teams. [18:04] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [18:08] >> I think I get pretty good, probably six to seven hours sleeps. [18:15] That's pretty good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [18:18] >> Married. [18:19] Any kids? [18:20] >> None. None. [18:21] Okay. And how old are you, Nitesh? [18:24] >> I am 38. [18:25] >> 38. [18:26] Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [18:31] >> That's an interesting question. [18:37] >> I think I was not experimenting too much, being very, very scared about failures. And probably I should have experimented more when I was in 20s. So probably this is what I'll tell if I meet myself when I was 20 years. [18:54] Experiment more Hiver launched back in 2011 broke a million dollar run rate in 2018 broke 4,000,000 run rate last year. And this year on track to break a $10,000,000 run rate growing nicely. 1,700 teams are using them to do support and help desks right inside of Gmail. That's their number one go to market, Chrome extension and Google Workplace Marketplace. Just They raised a 22,000,000 series B, sold around 10% of the business, 120 on the team as [19:20] they look to scale, 102% net dollar retention. So it's a sticky tool as they look to continue to build and grow and double down on marketing and sales. Nitesh, thanks for taking us to the top. [19:30] >> Thank you, Nathan. Thanks for your time. [19:34] One 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 one [19:58] p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. 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 [20:20] an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what [20:41] people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to [20:51] let me know what you [20:52] >> thought about this episode and [20:53] if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.

Why This Gmail Helpdesk is Doing $1.4M in ARRAug 20, 2018

hello everyone my guest today is Niraj Rondo and lt started his company hiver in late 2011 over the past 7 years have virtually bootstrapped it to 1.5 million bucks in ARR there mr r grew sixty percent in the last five months and they're now growing ten percent month-over-month announced in your series a sooner are you ready to take us to the top let's get started Nitin all right what is hayver and how do you guys make money so however is basically a tool that lets teams manage emails coming in to you know a shared email account like support at your company dot-com or in foetal company.com right so you know let's say you are a team of say five to ten people that basically handles that emails that come into a shared email account you would want to delegate emails keep track of who is doing what look into analytics of you know how you are doing you know where we are and what needs to be done and you know how your team is performing right you basically let you do that right from a gmail account interesting so this is kind of there's other companies like front app which kind of do something similar to this but if that's in their own interface not inside of Gmail absolutely so think of quests like front or Zendesk to some extent or is just to some extent that inside the Gmail code interesting okay and and walk me through numbers so what's your monthly recurring revenue today so yeah we are at one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in a mama murder right now okay one hundred and one one five you said well okay so they're about 1.4 million in air are right now yeah yes that's great now you bootstrap today but you're gonna really rate up to announce the series a yeah we did not actually accurately bootstrap so we raised around one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars through engines back in two thousand twelve or so and then we bootstrapped it you know there's a small team we just kept growing it and and we went through a couple of pivots on the product too and then we have basically have brought it to one point five million dollars in error and now we're going to announce it next month and so how much are you raising the series a so the city's a is close to a million dollars okay you're raising four million yeah got it and and are you raising mostly in India or folks back in the states how's that working so they did mr. Scindia in India okay and what is it are you getting terms that are similar to the US or like is it on a safe note or equity or what it's an equity in or it's it's it's equity pretty much like what a typical Series A in the US would look look like got it and what valuation are you raising at I don't know whether it's tape to disclose that but it's in the 15 to 20 million dollar range okay got it so you call it your song somewhere between what is that fifteen and twenty five percent of the company yeah interesting and and how did you negotiate that so that you know that's like that's like a ten or fifteen X your current air are yeah so you know the way we negotiated was basically you know to essentially show the velocity at which we are right now essentially show the size of the market that we are in which is very very big if you take into account you know how how many people actually need it right so yeah it's it's basically a function of the venice velocity that we have been able to hit and the size of the market and of course the fantastic project that we have managed to build you know which is really intuitive and easy to use so I think everyone we showed the product to whether the invested or not everyone was really impressed with our vision that we bring to the product and how simply we made it you know and is the round actually done how do you actually have the money in the bank or no so it should be so we are in the final stages of the diligence and should be there that's great I think we have fifteen days away from getting the check that's great put all this on our timeline for me when did you launch the company so yeah so the company was launched around the middle of 2011 okay and we were a small four to five people team for the largest part of our existence okay and it was a very different product when we launched and we actually went through two I creations on the product before we came to this sometime in 2017 okay and what are you at today how many teammates we are 36 people no 36 people everyone based in Bangalore absolutely okay well so there's 36 people and cashflow positive or no yeah we are okay so cash flow positive today and you mention it was yeah yeah okay so about break even yeah what what is growth so today you're doing a hundred fifteen grand a month what were you doing a year ago in August 2017 so as I mentioned right I mean we really accelerated in the last you know six months or so the product was very different earlier and it took some time for us to you know really build it out to the point where it is and mature it right so six months back we were at you know fifty five to sixty thousand dollars in emerald only give me more after twelve months ago months ago would have been you know the growing pretty slow idea so we would have been at around forty five to fifty k forty five thousand bucks okay that's great so good growth you've you've more than you almost tripled kind of year over yeah which is great and what's total customer count today how many paying customers so we are approximately 2,000 customers yeah 31,000 awesome customers and what are they pay on average per month so on an average customer would be you know one hundred fifty two hundred and sixty dollars yeah yeah or if I take a hundred fifteen grand per month divided by a thousand HP about 115 bucks per month right now yeah and what are they what are they getting for that is it a number of seats feature sets same size what is it yeah so it's it's basically so we have three plants and on an average the customers which we have acquired recently you know would be paying twenty to twenty seven twenty three dollars per seat right so an average account is usually six to seven seats mm-hmm and what is churn look like today so we have neck- you know mhm and of course so our net amount L is around minus two point five percent at this point I'm sorry so net negative revenue churn of negative two percent minus two point five percent yeah yeah that's it yeah that's great and um and and what about logo churn noble Chen would be at around two percent per month two percent per month gross or net of course okay that's great and and what have you done so at this price point you know getting churned that low is pretty impressive what have you done a drive turned out so the park is really sticky you know I think I think it's primarily a characteristic of the product you know once we get people on board it they tend to grow right because you know it's very sticky it is something that you really need on a day-to-day basis you know I mean an average user would have you know twenty five to thirty interactions with the product in terms you know what they're doing with it every day right so very sticky you know people once they get used to it it's hard for them to move out so I think the most of the chair actually happens in the first three months but you know if we can get people through the first three three to four months you know they tend to stick end in basically grow with the product mm-hmm and what about customer acquisition cost walk me through how you're driving all this growth and what he paid a question new customer so almost all of it is organic first of all you know if you we we do pretty well on some very high intent low traffic high intent keywords right if you sell for shared inbox or if you look for a way to do customer support or don't see where it says for any combination of Gmail and help desk for example right you'll find us very very easily so you know I think we are acquiring 80 to 90 percent of our customers free of cost you know through organic search right and the rest is actually coming through Adwords we have a small 8 to 9 8 to 9 k 8 to 9 thousand dollars per month in address spend which is you know driving some of our acquisition so again what's the CAC on the pay channels okay so you know I have this blended khaki lies you'd sail across organic and you know they would be around $150 to acquire a single logo okay and so what payback period there is four or five months this is yeah some one month where's most money you're about to raise where you gonna spend it yeah so you know I mean the product needs a lot of work you know so basically we are a very small you know 20 people product team and if you look at where the product can go if you if you look at the you know the scope to build out on top of email is a platform it's huge right so so a huge amount of the investment will actually go into taking the product into new directions you know basically improving what we have right now and the rest of course will go into marketing right I mean we will play a lot more with paid marketing it will go much more aggressive on that interesting what do you assume lifetime value in months and in dollars is so our current lifetime value right now is five thousand four hundred dollars approximately and how do you calculate that so you know it's basically what char COBOL tells us based on our current channel expansion you said you use char mobile you have this champion you like it absolutely love it good good good all right very good um let's see here what about expansion revenue so besides adding additional seats any other way to drive expansion remember currently or no yeah so you know I mean that's that's where a lot of the product work on the particles is needed because you know our our pricing test you know I mean we basically sell you know one tier which is the mid tier we cannot push a lot of the people the higher pricing tiers because you do not have the features which basically will help us you know get you get them to pay more right so we need a lot more in the product in terms of feature depth and that is where a lot that lot of the investors will go into right because that will directly help us you know get more money out of you know the existing customers by giving them more stuff besides SEO and besides the direct ad spend that your you're currently doing are there any other growth channels that are really working well for you I think I think the deserve pretty much the two things that we have tried we have we are dabbling with a lot of stuff you know we have a very strong presence on G to crowd the sass you know marketplace okay for a third organic we are still not paying for it I mean oh I mean we definitely start paying for it you know when we have you know the investor money coming in but we are seeing that as a strong channel because the presence is very strong we are actually rated one of the top ten has just for 2018 we are also featured on the report on the space right so so yeah that the marketplace is in general should come out to be a very very strong shell Express very good alright let's wrap up here Niraj with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book as either good one number two is there as is there a CEO you're following or studying right now no I I don't do that video number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business besides your own help spark ready haven't used number four how many hours of sleep to get every night I try to grade seven okay is that what you get I managed to okay alright and what's your situation married single kids I am I'm I'm married I have one kid I'm expecting the seven Monday the second one next month oh that's exciting in how old are you I'm an last question what he was your 20 year old self new I wish I was better at quoting but you have it sounds like a pretty big dev team there yeah but do you know I mean it you know speed in the early days is is very dependent on the founders coding themselves you know and I think we took quite a lot of time getting to you know a real product market fit and I think that could have been shortened you know if we handled a lot of things better than we did yeah do you have how many founders are there is it just you we're just just too as me yeah is the other one the developer yeah hardcore but not no J's moved to product no you know so we are both out of you know coding thanks good very good Niraj well guys there you have it again launched back many years ago 2011 they're now helping hyper hyper HQ they're basically helpdesk inside of gmail they have over a thousand customers paying them on average 115 bucks a month doing about 1.3 million in AR today that's up from just 45 K per month back in August of 2017 is almost 3x growth year over year they're getting ready to announce a four million dollar series a at a fifteen to twenty five million dollar valuation so healthy growth four point three million bucks total in the company to date again acquiring customers through ad spend but economics are making a lot of sense there's also you know just search ranking results that are driving them new customers for and $15 kak blended four month payback period lifetime by about 5,400 bucks negative revenue churn of negative two point five percent and they'll go turn about two percent gross per month Niraj thank you for taking us to the top thanks David thanks a lot

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