How Keito Reached $15K a Month in Revenue With 10 Enterprise Customers in 2021 (Interview with Founder Amal PS)

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Amal P. S.

00:01>> He's a former Infosys and EdgeVerve product manager. He's been part of the leadership of two small sized businesses, enabled scale during his tenure with over 200% increase in revenue and better visibility. He's now a pro athlete, passionate about fitness, new ideas and designs, and is building tech to connect people and new age technologies at keito.works. Alright. Amal, you ready to take us to the top?

Amal PS

00:21Yeah. Sure, Nathan. Happy to be here. Thank you for hosting.

Nathan Latka

00:24>> Athlete. Which sport?

Amal PS

00:27Kickboxing and fitness. Yeah. Shot put, javelin.

What Keito Sells

Nathan Latka

00:32>> Alright. Tell us what you're selling at keito. It's keito.works. What's the business?

Amal PS

00:39So we are having a no code automation platform, primarily focused on data automation and workflow automation for enterprise businesses.

Pricing and Enterprise Value Proposition

Nathan Latka

00:48>> Mhmm. And what are these businesses paying on average per month to use the technology?

Amal PS

00:52So they pay on transaction. Per month, it would be around $5,000 to $10,000 for usage.

Nathan Latka

00:59>> Okay. And that's pretty expensive for a no code tool. You're targeting the enterprise. What enables you to sell at such a high price point?

Amal PS

01:05It would be the kind of return which we can bring to the enterprises, mostly focused on the productivity, accuracy and the lowest exception rate which you could see in the market.

Nathan Latka

01:16>> The lowest what rate?

Amal PS

01:17Exception rates. So, of the enterprise automation tools have a very high exception rates which are hidden in the system, which means that even after implementing you would have to spend quite a lot of money on managing your exceptions, right? Whatever does not work in automation, so called you will have to handle with humans in between, which means it's no longer a true automation solution. So we look at having a real automation case for our businesses. I

01:42think that what ensures us to have a high price in the market.

Customer Use Cases and Sectors

Nathan Latka

01:46>> Okay. Interesting. And then tell me about some of your customers. Right? Are are these like, you know, enterprise accounts? I mean, you have Thomas Cookless on your site. You have the government of India, United States service. What are they using you for?

Amal PS

01:58So they are looking using primarily for the information extraction and information automation side. So we have the product dealing with information in two layers. One is with respect to fetching information from different sources, whether it is your textual or document or image sources, are able to fetch information. Second is to ideally process those information and pass it on to any of the business ops, right? Whether it is processing your loans or whether it is validating the

02:26KYC or whether it is you have to perform certain number of action based on the data that is available. I think all of these actions could be triggered within our platform.

Nathan Latka

02:34>> Are you selling mostly to fintech firms? You mentioned KYC processing.

Amal PS

02:38Yeah. Fintech is definitely one of our customers, BFSI sector. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

02:43>> That's your largest sector is fintech?

Amal PS

02:46Not largest, but we are primarily this is one of the growing sectors, would say. And it shows quite promising and we are also launching a new vertical SaaS application in the same sector.

Nathan Latka

02:57>> Interesting. Okay. So we'll get more of your backstory here in a second, but how many customers are you serving today?

Current Customer Count

Amal PS

03:03More than 10 enterprise customers.

Nathan Latka

03:05>> Okay. And so can we take the 10 times $5,000 a month minimum, you're doing like $50,000 $60,000 a month in revenue right now?

Amal PS

03:12No, we are slightly above that. So we do have a lot of production contracts in place right now. So we have completed a lot of POCs, paid POCs with the customers, enterprise customers as you have, as you already know right enterprise customers takes good amount of lead time to ideally start implementing because of the kind of security measures and the kind of contracting process it is involved. So ours is not a conventional SaaS solution. It is

03:38more or less an enterprise licensing model is also involved in place. Right? Your contracting process is slightly lengthier than an average business.

Nathan Latka

03:46>> Understood. But in terms of average, like actually onboarded licenses, you're doing what $70,000, $80,000 a month right now in revenue?

Amal PS

03:54So we have crossed around 200 ks plus in a year. That's what where we stand now.

Revenue and POC to Production Journey

Nathan Latka

04:01>> Okay. That doesn't answer my question, though. So in November, in terms of recurring revenue, how much did you last month in total revenue?

Amal PS

04:07So we crossed $15,000 across.

Nathan Latka

04:10>> One five? Yes. Okay. Got it. So so you're doing about $15,000 a month in revenue. And if you're doing that today, where were you exactly a year ago?

Amal PS

04:19A year ago, we would be slightly around zero, near to zero.

Nathan Latka

04:24>> Did you have any revenue a year ago?

Amal PS

04:26No. We were having a very near to zero revenue. Thousand, thousand, two thousand dollars is where we're we're standing.

Nathan Latka

04:32>> Okay. Got it. So you you were a thousand bucks a month a year ago, now $15,000 a month. So so you're scaling here. And now if you're doing $15,000 a month and you have 10 enterprise customers, they're not paying $5,000 or $10,000 a month each. They're paying like 1,000 a month each or 2,000 a month each.

Amal PS

04:45Correct. So we do have two kinds of customers. A couple of the customers who have converted from a paid POC to productions, a couple of customers who are in production. So, we are at a stage where we have closed a lot of customers, moved from the POC stage, the proof of concept stage to the production stage. That's where we are in. I think in the coming two years we would cross a million dollar ARR. Right? So

05:07that's where we could see.

Nathan Latka

05:08>> I understand where you could go, Amal, but in terms of where you are right now, again, customers are paying on average like 1,500 a month for $15,000 a month in total revenue. Correct?

Amal PS

05:18Not every customer, Nathan. So we have couple of customers, two or three customers who are paying the total license fees. So other customers have just moved from a POC to the production environment. Yeah. So they are in the process of ideally onboarding into us in terms of full scale licensing.

Nathan Latka

05:35>> Averages, we're just dividing two numbers. If you're doing $15,000 a month in revenue, which is what you just said, and you have 10 customers, we can divide. Right? So each customer on average is about $1,500 per month.

Amal PS

05:46Yeah. So that would become the average size of the customer who is paying today, but it consists of two kind of revenue numbers, right? One is from the license fee, second is from your paid POC cost. So paid POC cost drastically drops down the average billing of a customer.

Nathan Latka

06:03>> And how much how much are the paid POCs typically?

Amal PS

06:06It costs from around 2,000 to $5,000 per customer.

Nathan Latka

06:09>> One time or monthly?

Amal PS

06:10It's a one time cost, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

06:13>> I see. And and and how what enables you to move someone from paying $3,000 one time to 4 or $5,000 per month after the POC?

How Volume Drives License Revenue

Amal PS

06:22So during the POC, customer validates whether the platform could handle the workflow. It could handle the information extraction. That's what the customer looks at. Once that is stable, the customers looks at moving a large volume of data. Right? So here during the POC, it might be a minimal size of data. So there is one mortgage customer where we have made them live, where they are processing around 100,000 plus documents transacted every month. So that means the

06:47volume increases and your license cost also increases. So the license cost is directly proportional to the volume of data processed in the platform.

Funding History and Angel Rounds

Nathan Latka

06:55>> I see, makes sense. Tell me more about how you funded the business. Are you guys bootstrapped or have you raised?

Amal PS

07:00So we were bootstrapped in the early ages. Later we had a couple of angel rounds. We raised around $400,000 until then.

Nathan Latka

07:07>> And what year?

Amal PS

07:092019, 2020. So two years back to back.

Nathan Latka

07:13>> And and 400,000 on a safe, I assume?

Amal PS

07:16400,000 on equity.

Nathan Latka

07:19>> On a 20,000,000 valuation?

Amal PS

07:21No. Not 20,000,000 valuation either. So currently, are in the process of raising another round. So that would become our first institutional round.

Nathan Latka

07:29>> Sorry. Yeah. When you raised the 400,000, what valuation did you raise at?

Amal PS

07:33Yeah. So I I wouldn't be able to comment on the valuation as current current rounds are ongoing.

Valuation and Cap Table

Nathan Latka

07:38>> Well, anyone that's looking at your current round is going to ask for a cap table and they're going to see what the valuation was in your seed round.

Amal PS

07:44Yeah, it was at 4,300,000.

Nathan Latka

07:46>> Okay, got it. So you sold about 10% of the business?

Amal PS

07:49Yes, not 10%. I think over a period 20% of the business. So we had two rounds in the past. So the most recent round was at $4,300,000 pre-money.

Nathan Latka

08:01>> Okay. So you've sold right now investors own 20% of the business. Correct, Nathan. And how much do you still own?

Amal PS

08:08I own almost 70% of the business.

Nathan Latka

08:10>> Okay, so you're the major shareholder here. So why go raise more capital? Obviously, you get diluted. Where do you think you'll invest that to drive growth?

Amal PS

08:17So first, I think we were trying to identify the product market fit and where we need to spend the money. So so today, we know where we can spend the money, and that's when we started raising our institutional capital now.

Nathan Latka

08:28>> How much are you looking to raise?

Amal PS

08:301.2 mil, and half of that is already subscribed.

Nathan Latka

08:34>> Oh, great. What valuation?

Amal PS

08:36So we would be raising at around 10 mil valuation.

Nathan Latka

08:39>> Does that feel high or low to you?

Amal PS

08:41No. It's actually a emotional feeling. Right? It's not something bound to what do we feel. I think collectively, we feel fine with the valuation and it's completely a win win for both of us.

Nathan Latka

08:54>> And if investors currently own 20% and you own 70%, where's the other 10%?

Amal PS

09:00So we have ESOP's employee shares. A lot of the employees, early employees on a good chunk of the company.

Team Size and Engineering

Nathan Latka

09:06>> I see. I see. Tell me more about that. What's the team size today?

Amal PS

09:10So we have 14 people in the team. We have six interns working full time. So that's the total team.

Nathan Latka

09:16>> I see. And how many engineers, Amal?

Amal PS

09:19Primary engineers, and nine people are engineering.

Nathan Latka

09:22>> Oh, wow. Are you an engineer?

Amal PS

09:24Yeah. I am an engineer.

Nathan Latka

09:26>> Very cool. Where is the team based?

Amal PS

09:28Team is based out of Pune, India.

Nathan Latka

09:30>> Something special.

Amal PS

09:32Yeah. We have a scattered team. We have couple of them in Bangalore, which is a non place in India for startups, and we have couple of them in Delhi.

Nathan Latka

09:40>> Amazing. Something special is happening in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune. There's so many great SaaS companies coming out of that region right now. So nice work on the growth. Are you raising the 1,200,000, are you is there a healthy angel ecosystem there in Pune and India or are you having to look elsewhere to find capital?

Amal PS

09:55I think in India currently have a healthy ecosystem, but at the same time, people are looking at US investors where their market is primarily US.

Churn and Enterprise Contract Length

Nathan Latka

10:06>> Makes a lot of sense. Talk to me about churn. These enterprise customers that are now paying per month, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month, do they churn?

Amal PS

10:14So mostly for us, we have not reached the stage where we could measure a lot of churn because most of the customers are going into contracting for us. So we do not know whether how much is the churn rate. Because most of the enterprise contracts are for two, three years kind of a timeline.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Nathan Latka

10:29>> Yep, yep, yep. Talk to me about you mentioned you know where to spend money to drive growth. What does it cost to get a new, you know, 3,000 POC?

Amal PS

10:36The cost to get a $3,000 POC is around $3,000 to $3,500 for us today. Okay.

Nathan Latka

10:41>> Okay. So you get a sort of instant payback on that, which means your only upside is if they convert and do a monthly plan after the POC. Correct?

Amal PS

10:49Correct. The cost involved primarily is in terms of getting the enterprise onboarded with us. Right? So we have an instant maybe breakeven, you could say operational breakeven of the cost spend.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits

Nathan Latka

11:01>> Very cool, Amal. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book?

Amal PS

11:06Hard Things About Hard Things and Shoe Dog, Phil Knight.

Nathan Latka

11:09>> Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Yeah. Steve Jobs for many long years. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Keito?

Amal PS

11:20There are many top of the mind whimsical, ClickUp, Nordship.

Nathan Latka

11:25>> Yep. ClickUp's good. Why do you use ClickUp?

Amal PS

11:29Project management, easy to use, simple tracking, any team member can understand, no need of any handholding.

Nathan Latka

11:38>> And and you're building this in in Pune, so your whole team in India uses ClickUp?

Amal PS

11:42Yes. Correct.

Nathan Latka

11:43>> You switch with someone else like Trello or Jira or Asana, or did you always use ClickUp?

Amal PS

11:48No. We we have been quite savvy as a team. So we have used most of these tools even at an early stage. Basecamp, Trello, Asana, Jira. So whichever is the latest tool which adapts to the pace at which we are going, we we jump onto that and try to understand fit in our, yeah, that's what we do.

Nathan Latka

12:07>> So what do you like about ClickUp over Trello?

Amal PS

12:11I think Trello is a combination of Evernote, Notion, and click and other tools which are available Jira. Right? So it's it's convenient. It could be used by any of the team. So I think that's the most flexible thing. Trello becomes something which is available at a higher level. You cannot go into the minute details of items. So Trello, you could have a good quarterly plan or a yearly plan, but once you go down to execution, it's

12:34very difficult to track in Trello. It becomes

Nathan Latka

12:36really easy.

12:36>> Because you can plan and execute inside of ClickUp versus Trello is more for planning.

Amal PS

12:41Correct.

Nathan Latka

12:42>> Very cool. Alright. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? Six. Six hours. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Amal PS

12:51Married.

Nathan Latka

12:52>> Any kiddos? No. Okay. And how old are you, Amal?

Amal PS

12:56So I'm 29.

Nathan Latka

12:58>> 29. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Amal PS

13:02So I wish I could I could have read a lot more books early on, maybe onboard and mentor so that I could learn what I could do next in my life.

Nathan Latka

13:14>> Guys, Keito, a true tool to help you automate your data automation needs and scale. They've got 10 enterprise accounts right now, about a thousand bucks a month in revenue a year ago, now $10,000 $15,000 a month as they look to scale. They raised a capital. They raised $400,000 in a seed round, sold about 20% to investors, now raising a 1,200,000 series. They had a 10,000,000 valuation. Team of 14 mainly based in Pune, India as they

13:38>> look to scale. Amal, thanks for taking us to the top.

Amal PS

13:41Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you for your time.

Nathan Latka

13:45One 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

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