Founder Interview
How Itilite Grew Five Times in a Year From a $200K Run Rate and Reached 80 Customers (Interview with CEO Mayank Kukreja)
- Interview Date
- May 22, 2019
- Interviewee
- Mayank KukrejaCEO and Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Revenue Run Rate (2018)
$200K
Customers (2019)
80
YoY Growth (2019)
400%
Total Funding
$5M
Team Size (2019)
80
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Mayank Kukreja during the interview recorded in May 2019 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Itilite’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Itilite launched commercially in November 2017 and signed its first customer in October 2017
- 02About a year before the interview Itilite was at roughly a $200K run rate, and Mayank said it had grown five times since, a 400% increase
- 03Itilite had 80 customers as of May 2019, each paying an average of $1,000 per month across all revenue streams
- 04Revenue is split roughly 50% subscription fees and 50% supplier commissions
- 05Customer acquisition cost is approximately $3,000 per customer, driven almost entirely by headcount rather than paid marketing
- 06The sales team had 3 inside sales reps, about 10 field sales reps who met customers and closed deals, and a head of sales
- 07Total team size is 80 people, including a 24x7 travel support and operations team
- 08Itilite had lost only 2 customers in its first year and a half, both due to those companies shutting down
- 09The company raised a Series A and had raised close to $5M in total as of the interview
- 10Year founded: 2017
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Run Rate (2018) | $200K | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| ARPU (2019) | $1,000 per month | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Customers (2019) | 80 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| YoY Growth (2019) | 400% | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Total Funding Raised | $5M | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Team Size (2019) | 80 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Inside Sales Reps (2019) | 3 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Field Sales Reps (2019) | 10 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| CAC (2019) | $3,000 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Monthly Burn (rupees) (2019) | 50 lakhs | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Subscription Revenue Share (2019) | 50% | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Commission Revenue Share (2019) | 50% | Founder interview, May 2019 |
| Year Founded | 2017 | Founder interview, May 2019 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
About a year before the interview, Itilite was at roughly a $200K annual run rate, and Mayank said the company had grown five times since, about 400% growth. Six months before the interview, he said, it had been at roughly half of where it stood then. With about 80 customers averaging about $1,000 a month, host Nathan Latka put Itilite at almost a $1M run rate, and Mayank agreed. Mayank said the three to four months before the interview had gone into working out how to make the sales motion scalable.
Customers
The company reached 80 customers by May 2019, starting from its first paying customer in October 2017. Mayank noted that early customers were won through personal credibility and connections, with later growth driven by case studies and an inside sales team.
Team
Itilite grew to 80 total employees, including engineering, sales, and a large 24x7 support and operations team required to assist travelers in real time. The sales team had three inside sales people, about 10 field sales people and a head of sales, and most of them had joined in the three to four months before the interview.
Funding
The company raised close to $5M in total, including a recently closed Series A. Mayank said the money was going mainly into engineering and sales headcount so the company could grow faster. Monthly burn was about 50 lakh rupees, which he said left a very long runway: the recent round had not yet been put to work, and he wanted to hire more aggressively.
Growth Strategy
Cold Outreach and Inside Sales
Itilite's primary growth channel was outbound sales, combining cold email marketing and cold calling from a three-person inside sales team. Mayank confirmed the company had done almost no paid marketing and that most of the CAC was attributable to team headcount.
Field Sales Team
A 10-person field sales team handled in-person meetings and deal closings. Mayank noted this team was growing quickly, and that most of the sales team had joined in the three to four months before the interview.
Founder Credibility and Network
The first customers were acquired by leveraging the founders' McKinsey consulting backgrounds and personal networks. Mayank explained that credibility from prior experience helped open doors before the company had case studies to show.
Customer Referrals and Case Studies
After making the first few customers highly successful, Itilite used those results as case studies to win the next wave of customers. Referrals from existing customers also contributed to the lead pipeline alongside outbound efforts.
Planned Channel Expansion
At the time of the interview, Mayank said the company planned to open paid marketing, events, and additional channels it had only experimented with so far, and that the email marketing and cold calling it already used could still be scaled quite a lot.
Best Quotes
“So itilite is trying to take corporate travel online. We are a SaaS platform, which we sell to mid to large sized companies, and they use it to manage their full business travel, flight, bus, train, visa, ForEx, whatnot.”
“On an average, we make about $1,000 per customer combining all the revenue streams.”
“About a year ago, around this time, we were doing about 200,000 run rate. So we have grown five x in the year.”
“The first customers were hard. You have to somehow create credibility. We use our own backgrounds first of all. Both of the founders come from very credible backgrounds. Both of us worked in McKinsey and some of the larger companies in India that helped create some credibility.”
“By end of twenty seventeen, have never done a customer without revenue. So October 2017 is when we got our first customer, very small 50 people company, but we were still charging them.”
“We have almost zero churn. As I said, we spend a lot of time. In that one and a half year, we have lost two customers and also those because those companies are no longer.”
“Roughly about $3,000 per customer.”
“More patience. We have to understand that things... Is a marathon, the career is a marathon. I always wanted results quickly in the job, in the startup. You have to be more patient, although you hustle, but results take time.”
What Happened Next
This page captures Itilite as it stood in May 2019, when the company had about 80 customers, made about $1,000 a month per customer on average and had grown five times in a year. Itilite is still operating. Visit the Itilite company profile on GetLatka for current metrics and funding information.
View Itilite’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:01Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:26Business Model and How Itilite Makes Money
- 2:12Revenue Per Customer and Revenue Mix
- 2:38Company Timeline and Launch
- 2:49Customer Count
- 4:24Revenue Growth and Run Rate History
- 4:42How Itilite Won Its First Customers
- 6:21Sales Motion and Lead Generation
- 6:43Sales Team Structure and Size
- 7:32Total Team Size and Operations
- 7:56Funding Raised and Capital Deployment
- 8:47Monthly Burn Rate
- 9:52Customer Acquisition Cost and Payback
- 10:07Growth Channels and Paid Marketing Plans
- 10:39Churn and Product Stickiness
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:01Hello, everyone. My guest today is Mayank Kukreja. He is the CEO and founder of a company called itilite. A SaaS platform which digitizes corporate travel and incentivizes employees to save money for their company during travel. He understands the pain of business travel deeply, having lived the life of a McKinsey consultant spending two hundred nights per year on the road. Mayank, are you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Thank you for having me. You bet.
Business Model and How Itilite Makes Money
Nathan Latka
00:26All right. So tell us about the company. What's the company doing? What is your business model? How do you make money?
Mayank Kukreja
00:32>> Sure. So itilite is trying to take corporate travel online. We are a SaaS platform, which we sell to mid to large sized companies, and they use it to manage their full business travel, flight, bus, train, visa, ForEx, whatnot. That's the baseline. Where we stand out from the crowd is basically B2C travel is very automated and online. B2B travel is today still happening over calls and emails. So we provide an exceptional experience to
01:04>> the end user. We give the full data visibility to the controllers, all the approvals, workflow, everything happens online. And the thing that we stand out is we help companies incentivize their employees to travel cheaper. What that means let's say you're traveling for your company and your company says you can stay in a $300 hotel. You would take a $300 hotel. But using our platform, companies can tell their employees that if you stay in a $200 hotel
01:30>> voluntarily, you can now save $100 for the company, you get a part of the savings.
Nathan Latka
01:35What percentage do give the sum of the savings? That's a company's choice. The company is giving to the employee.
Mayank Kukreja
01:40>> They are sharing the savings.
Nathan Latka
01:42Okay.
Mayank Kukreja
01:43>> So it leads to the right incentives. People start taking off company's money and take the right decisions.
Nathan Latka
01:48So how do you... On average, what's the company going to pay you to use your technology?
Mayank Kukreja
01:53>> So our technology is at the core still managing their travel. So we charge a subscription fee to companies, which is roughly about 3% of their travel spend.
Nathan Latka
02:03But we
Mayank Kukreja
02:03>> make everything from two sides. We make a subscription revenue from the companies, but while we book, we still make a commission on the incentives from the suppliers as well.
Revenue Per Customer and Revenue Mix
Nathan Latka
02:12Okay. Over the past twelve months, what percent of your revenue was commission versus the 3% of travel spend?
Mayank Kukreja
02:19>> Roughly equal. Roughly equal.
Nathan Latka
02:21A quarter?
Mayank Kukreja
02:23>> Roughly equal.
Nathan Latka
02:24So about 50% comes from
Mayank Kukreja
02:26>> subscription subscription and 50% comes from the commissions. On an average, we make about $1,000 per customer combining all the revenue streams.
Nathan Latka
02:36Each month?
Mayank Kukreja
02:37>> Yes.
Company Timeline and Launch
Nathan Latka
02:38Okay. Very good. That's very good. Okay. And put this on a timeline for me. When did you launch the company?
Mayank Kukreja
02:43>> We started the company early twenty seventeen, but we did our commercial launch towards November 2017.
Customer Count
Nathan Latka
02:49And how many? How many companies have you been able to scale to today?
Mayank Kukreja
02:54>> We have about 80 customers.
Nathan Latka
02:55Okay. That's very good. And I want to learn how you got those first customers. It's always the tricky part, right? But before we do that though, help me understand, I mean, do you measure things like total travel spend through your platform over the past twelve months?
Mayank Kukreja
03:10>> We do, but that's not the metric we will go after because that's a very vanity metric. What we really go after and what our sales team target, for example, is, is how much we made out of that. I can really cut down our pricing and get a lot of volume, but what's the use if we
03:29>> don't make anything out of it?
Nathan Latka
03:30Well, you're always taking 3% though, right?
Mayank Kukreja
03:33>> It's not 3%. There is a lot of flexibility as an early startup. You do experiment a lot with pricing. On an average, you make 3%, but there are a lot of different models we use.
Nathan Latka
03:44Okay, interesting. So those are still individual negotiations. If someone comes to you and says they're gonna put a bunch of volume through you, you'll take less than 3%.
Mayank Kukreja
03:53>> That's not really the case. We typically do a different model. So we say that if you do up to X amount, we'll charge a fixed fee.
Nathan Latka
04:00Right? So
Mayank Kukreja
04:00>> we changed the models. The average still ends up being around 3%.
Nathan Latka
04:05Okay. So on average, you're making a thousand dollars per month from each customer. You have 80 customers. So you're doing about $80,000 a month right now? Roughly.
Mayank Kukreja
04:13>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
04:14And by the way, congrats. You're almost at the million dollar run rate. That's a big milestone.
Mayank Kukreja
04:18>> Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Nathan Latka
04:20And help me understand growth. Where were you... What were you doing about a year ago?
Revenue Growth and Run Rate History
Mayank Kukreja
04:24>> About a year ago, around this time, we were doing about 200,000 run rate. So we have grown five x in the year.
Nathan Latka
04:30Yeah. That's great. So that would have been about $18,000 per month.
Mayank Kukreja
04:33>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
04:34So you've really grown nicely the first... The fees first twelve months or so. Help me understand how you got those first couple customers.
How Itilite Won Its First Customers
Mayank Kukreja
04:42>> The first customers were hard. You have to somehow create credibility. We use our own backgrounds first of all. Both of the founders come from very credible backgrounds. Both of us worked in McKinsey and some of the larger companies in India that helped create some credibility. Then we said that we know this problem as consultants. We traveled a lot, so we understand this problem. So you build credibility on yourself. Then you build credibility on the idea that
05:07>> this idea logically makes sense. Why don't you incentivize your employees? And then sometimes you use some connections to get the first customers. It's about getting those customers, first few customers you have to make really, really successful. Then you get the next five customers because then you have case studies to prove that. But yeah, first five customers is whatever works.
Nathan Latka
05:27Yep. And then you're trying to get your first five customers kind of in 2017 timeframe. Were you totally pre revenue in 2017 or did you have some amount of revenue by the end of twenty seventeen?
Mayank Kukreja
05:36>> By end of twenty seventeen, have never done a customer without revenue. So October 2017 is when we got our first customer, very small 50 people company, but we were still charging them.
Nathan Latka
05:47So you were doing what, $2,000 a month in December 2017?
Mayank Kukreja
05:52>> Something like that.
Nathan Latka
05:52Yeah. Something small.
05:55And then do you remember about six or seven months ago in December 2018, you were able to get up to?
Mayank Kukreja
06:04>> Six months ago, we were roughly about half of where we are today.
Nathan Latka
06:08Okay, very good. Yeah, so twelve months ago at 18,000 and then six months ago, 40,000 and now today 80,000. Mean, obviously that's a super healthy growth rate. Where are your customers coming from today? Have you started to build kind of a scalable sales motion?
Sales Motion and Lead Generation
Mayank Kukreja
06:21>> Absolutely. That's where we have to focus on the last three to four months. That's what we are trying to do. How do we make it scalable?
Nathan Latka
06:27It's mostly outbound sales.
Mayank Kukreja
06:31>> We still don't do a lot of marketing. Don't. We generate leads through a small inside sales team we have, which generate email marketing, some cold calling, and a bunch of references from our current customers.
Sales Team Structure and Size
Nathan Latka
06:43How many are on the inside sales team?
Mayank Kukreja
06:45>> Three people.
Nathan Latka
06:46Okay. And break down how they work. Are those all executives or is there an SDR and an AE and a customer success rep?
Mayank Kukreja
06:54>> There's no. The sales team is split into parts. There are three people in the inside sales team and there are field sales team. The outbound would go and meet the customer and close. That team as of today is about 10 people. That's one which we are growing pretty fast. And then there is a head of sales.
Nathan Latka
07:15Got it. So there's what, like 14 people total just on the sales team?
Mayank Kukreja
07:20>> Very interesting.
Nathan Latka
07:21Okay. What's the total?
Mayank Kukreja
07:23>> By the way, I have joined in the last three, four months. Most of these 14.
Nathan Latka
07:28Okay. Got it. So what's what's the total team size?
Total Team Size and Operations
Mayank Kukreja
07:32>> The total team right now is about 80 people.
Nathan Latka
07:34How many?
Mayank Kukreja
07:35>> Eight zero. Eight zero.
Nathan Latka
07:37We have a pretty large
Mayank Kukreja
07:40>> support and operations team because what we are into is travel. Whatever technology you build at the end, you still have to support
Nathan Latka
07:46the customer when they are at
Mayank Kukreja
07:47>> the airport and they are about to miss their flight. So we have a 24x7 support team which works in shifts.
Nathan Latka
07:53And have you bootstrapped the company to date or have you raised?
Funding Raised and Capital Deployment
Mayank Kukreja
07:56>> Oh, we have raised two rounds of company.
Nathan Latka
07:58Okay. How much in the company total?
Mayank Kukreja
08:00>> Close to $5,000,000. We raised our Series A recently.
Nathan Latka
08:04Okay. And And why did you need that money? What made this difficult to scale without raising capital?
Mayank Kukreja
08:11>> So one, we could have done it without capital. It could have been much slower. It's just the speed. Second, this is a very technology heavy company. And either you can do it with two people or...
08:27>> It says that we took a call, we want to go faster on this.
Nathan Latka
08:29Yep. And so where are you spending most of that money? I assume it's probably on headcount.
Mayank Kukreja
08:36>> Absolutely. So engineering and sales headcount.
Nathan Latka
08:39Yeah. Yeah. So can you give me a general sense of aggressive you're being every month? How much are you burning in cash each month right now?
Monthly Burn Rate
Mayank Kukreja
08:47>> The burn is pretty low still. The burn is still,
Nathan Latka
08:50I can
Mayank Kukreja
08:51>> order to that, is less than a thousand dollars.
Nathan Latka
08:55Oh, okay. So your bank is going down less than a thousand dollars each month.
Mayank Kukreja
08:59>> Yeah. So the 5,000,000 is basically still...
Nathan Latka
09:02So actually not thousand dollars. So I'm just trying
Mayank Kukreja
09:06>> to convert in my head to dollars because we're talking rupees.
Nathan Latka
09:08What's the rupee number?
Mayank Kukreja
09:12>> The rupee number is about 50 lakhs. 50 lakhs is about
09:18>> 5,000,000 rupees.
Nathan Latka
09:21So that would be about 70,000 US dollars.
Mayank Kukreja
09:26>> Yeah. I went really wrong, but yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:29Dollars 7,000. So we do have
Mayank Kukreja
09:32>> a very long runway from that because we do want to make it more aggressive on the hiring side. So the investment has not yet gone in. As I said, we recently raised the raise around.
Nathan Latka
09:41Yeah. Where are you... Mean, when you look at your your inside sales team plus any kind of paid spend you're doing or things like that, what's your fully weighted cost to get a new thousand dollar a month customer? Do you know?
Customer Acquisition Cost and Payback
Mayank Kukreja
09:52>> Roughly about $3,000 per customer.
Nathan Latka
09:55That's still pretty healthy. I mean, means your payback's three months.
Mayank Kukreja
09:58>> Absolutely. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:59Can you... Those channels you're currently using, can you continue to pour more money into them or were you diminishing returns pretty quickly?
Growth Channels and Paid Marketing Plans
Mayank Kukreja
10:07>> We need to start many more channels. We have done, as I said, zero marketing. We almost do no pay.
10:14>> So paid marketing, events, these are the channels we want to open up. We have just experimented with them. Also the channels we do right now, which is email marketing, cold calls, we can scale them pretty... Quite a lot.
Nathan Latka
10:25So most of your CAC right now is from team and head count over and not paid marketing spend on Google and Facebook ads.
Mayank Kukreja
10:30>> Absolutely.
Nathan Latka
10:31Got it. What about... You have enough data yet to understand how sticky your product is for these folks? Do you know what your gross churn is annually?
Churn and Product Stickiness
Mayank Kukreja
10:39>> We have almost zero churn. As I said, we spend a lot of time. In that one and a half year, we have lost two customers and also those because those companies are no longer.
Nathan Latka
10:50Yeah.
Mayank Kukreja
10:51>> We have not lost them otherwise. So maybe like 2% churn annually or something very small.
10:55>> They were very smaller customers, so the revenue churn is much lower.
10:59>> Yeah. Otherwise, most of year. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
11:01You been able to, identify ways to drive expansion revenue? And if so, what do you what do you think a customer expands to from year one to year two on average?
Mayank Kukreja
11:11>> So not really. There is an organic expansion as the customer expands, their spend increases and so we make more. Yeah. A
11:19>> different product line or a different service, we haven't focused on that yet.
Nathan Latka
11:23Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You're you're kind of in hustle mode still in the early days, which that's a beautiful place to be. Okay, Mayank. Very good. Let's let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Mayank Kukreja
11:34>> It's not really a business book, but Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.
Nathan Latka
11:38Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Mayank Kukreja
11:42>> Not really a CEO, Jason Lemkin. I read his tweets. That's what my Twitter is for.
Nathan Latka
11:48Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Mayank Kukreja
11:52>> Personally for me, it is Evernote and for the company it's Slack.
Nathan Latka
11:56Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Mayank Kukreja
12:00>> Five to six hours.
Nathan Latka
12:01That's pretty good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Mayank Kukreja
12:05>> Married, no kids.
Nathan Latka
12:06No kids. And how old are you?
Mayank Kukreja
12:08>> 34.
Nathan Latka
12:09Last question. What do wish your 20 year old self knew?
Mayank Kukreja
12:15>> More patience. We have to understand that things... Is a marathon, the career is a marathon. I always wanted results quickly in the job, in the startup. You have to be more patient, although you hustle, but results take time.
Nathan Latka
12:28Guys, itilite.com helping companies manage their travel spend by incentivizing employees to save money. 80 customers right now, each customer pays about a thousand dollars per month. So almost $1,000,000 in terms of run rate right now. They make money by taking about 3% of the travel spend plus the commission from hotels and trips and airlines and places they book for these companies. They've grown from $18,000 a month in revenue just a year ago, so over 344% year
12:54over year growth churning almost no one burning $70,000 per month right now in in money, but they've raised $5,000,000 so plenty of run rate team of 80 people as Mayank looks to scale. Mayank, thank you for taking us to the top.
Mayank Kukreja
13:07>> Thank you so much.