How Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta grew to $35M revenue and 9 customers in 2024.

he launched his company his current company back in Mobile wallow back in 2013 2014 raised four million bucks in venture capital did 1 million revenue 2015 went up to 4 million revenue but this is really just solving a cash flow problem he was doing this just on media spend in 2016 they stopped with the media spending which gave them leverage with Big Data partners and started focusing more on a SAS based kind of data play which they did 750 grand in 2016 they're now growing that and ideally doing in 2017 about 5.1 million dollars in projected revenue but if we just look at the data stream revenue stream they've growing almost 20x year-over-year from 12 K last June to most 250 or last tomato 172k this may they'll do in June about 250 K just on that segment this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what the marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have this 766 coming up tomorrow morning we learned from Nick Candido and with 10 million raised I asked them will you beat a system of record for every chief operating officer well they're well on their way tune in to find out how many customers they have good morning everybody my guest today is an indian dada he's the CEO and chairman of a company called mobile voila a mobile consumer audience platform company before this company before mobile wala he founded a company called chutney technologies where he was backed by kleiner perkins and eventually acquired by Cisco Systems he's been on the faculties of Georgia Tech the University of Arizona and the National University of Singapore he obtained his undergraduate degree many many years ago in his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland College Park and India are you ready to take it to the top okay very good so kick us off tell us what mobile wallet does and what's your revenue model how do you make money audience platform so you know if you're familiar with folks that are familiar with digital audiences you know things like what Oracle blue Kai and data logics and these companies do so mobile collects a whole bunch of data on how consumers behave on mobile and then processes the data to produce artifacts that is useful to mobile marketers in particular we produce two we have two products one is mobile audience which is if you are a large CPG company and you want to market and diaper too you know expectant mothers in their third trimester is Procter & Gamble right pampers hey I want to target expectant mothers in their third trimester and we're going to tell you hey these are the mobile IDs such mother's that's one and the second product we sell is we collect such large amounts of raw data you know large companies like you know axiom and Oracle just buy raw mobile data from us like for instance what locations do I see people at what IP addresses do I see people connected to what telecom carriers are people using for their mobile things like that so let me a few questions here so our people something people are paying you kind of pay as you go they say we want this kind of data export you export it and they pay you one time then they come back a year later do it again from us they say okay we want to target young children or people who use the Galaxy S a phone and they we tell them okay here are 10 million IDs you use them and you pay us one time that's one time okay people buy raw data from us right so when when a large company will come and tell us that we want to know every month all the locations that you see people at we tell them okay we're gonna give it to you as a subscription signup for 12 months and pay us 25 dollars okay and I don't want to talk about both these are the same times they're very different business models but generally speaking is there that's clearly larger for you they'll pay as you go versus the SAS model the model is larger revenues SAS was 65 percent audience was 35 percent but I expect that even in December this year and why do you say that but don't you want to build the recurring stream you know we're actually transferring you're trying to modify our audience pricing also as a recurring stream right I see by this audience segments from you and pay you one time and we know you're using us a lot so why don't you pay us 50 grand a month and we'll give you every segment you want and you can use it as many times as you want I see it's kind of decoupling from the model of saying hey we're gonna give you ten million Galaxy Note data points for I'm making this what is it what's that sell for a hundred grand a million something like that oh I see I see okay so it's more it's almost kind of like a model that some of these companies that charge for like per API call I see I see okay okay that helps you understand that's in the equation now everyone's wondering I can feel them through the through the their ear buds going Nathan asked him this question where you get this data from so for instance you know there are large exchanges that allow us to look at a bid request request go through their platforms in return for data we provide them so that's a huge source for data so that does just to be clear that does not add to your kind of or doesn't cut into your gross margin that's not a cost of goods sold for you you're trading pro bono you're giving them something you're getting something all water all water yes give them back valuable information and they in turn let us look at their bitstream to be able to create audiences number two you know as as our audience customers increase right so we have DSPs we have ad networks that are using our data what we have them do in order to be able to profile their users we required them to put a little pixel little mobile wallet pixel in every ad creative deserve right so when you are consuming New York Times content on your on your iPad and get served to you we get two major ways it's that include things like location data or like an accelerometer data like blu-ray if it is the phone shaking are they driving because the speeds fast stuff like that [Music] - two data points over time now people might be thinking oh Nathan that sound like a great strategy but of course an intake embargo he's huge of course he has something to give them when you had nothing to offer [Music] this is what we can provide you got it so you started kind of with just mu buy it and eventually drove that cost down by saying hey we have enough data now or you should trade us like how much do you mind me do you mind me asking how much media buy yeah 2014 was our first sort of revenue year okay a million dollars of revenue that's pretty good medium I'm ok yes sorry just to be clear 1 million of media buys went through you or your cut of the revenue from the media by was 1 million okay and was 2015 and just to be clear you call this your audience platform right 2015 we were simply buying media in order to make my investors happy I just want to be spending money yeah can I make some revenue or the media we were buying so we we had some very very we are building this data platform underneath we can 2015 year still pure play 1 1 1 just media buying 4 million and then what happened 2016 2016 June we stopped media mine almost completely right okay now in 2016 but you know but we bought a lot of media or media vine was growing and in 2016 we did something something very interesting Nathan which I don't know how much I can elaborate on we played a key role in the u.s. presidential election okay how much our 2016 revenues were also four million dollars a little over four million dollars but $750,000 works from data and about 3.25 was from media okay so let me just make you money just break this down make sure I get it completely straight 2014 1 million in revenue all media 2015 4 million in revenue all media 2016 you stopped media buying in June so prior to that June date you did about three point two five million in media and then after June you focused exclusively on the data side professional service media stuff like that okay now I want to ask more about what role you put in a special you see the special election or the presidential election can you can you elaborate it all there give you details because I'm not gonna get you to tell me which party am i interesting for instance we Christians based off what what is an evangelical Christians mobile data look like are you looking at they're like are they at the church on Sunday morning Christian you need to wow that's very cool ok I won't make you tell me what party you worked with but I'll ask a different question were you on the winning side or the losing side [Music] maybe maybe your product didn't work and that's why they lost it's my job to tempt you that's good that's very good ok let's see let's get more in the back story here so 2014 was your first year with revenue is that also your first year at all that's when you launched how much was that for and how much have you raised to date investors yep which is lying on the company's books as alone when you raise another round of funding which I would think would be later on this year so just to be clear you back in 2013 you did a four million dollar convertible note and then you raised a note on top of that convertible note not not venture debt okay got it so let me ask you a question I mean I imagine as you're trying to like you're trying to convince investors hey listen we're pivoting from buying media to a day to play you're not gonna see triple revenue growth year over year because of that and they're like breathing down your back going why are you flat between 2015 and 2016 how do you get them off your back [Music] and we $12,000 rates in the month of June this year which is 13 months from then we just hit $250,000 in data so what is that in terms of your gross 12k to what oh wow okay so just to be clear last May did 12,000 and data revenue this past May you did 250 grand this current month in June in May we did in 170 2015 that's great okay so that's where you kind of get okay good so that's an amazing growth rate you have to take out the media spend cuz that kind of that was a the media spend was a cash play early on right to buy you runway and get data relationships okay so take me through some of the other stuff now so what's how many customers are paying you for the day just that only talked me to me about the data play stuff and they pay anywhere between five to forty one thousand dollars okay got it it's pretty interesting right so so our biggest chunk of audience revenues comes from all right yeah so we are one of the biggest contributors to the Oracle blue Kai marketplace with the largest digital data marketplace in the world is oracle included in that nine number the nine customer number and basically the end of every month and this is true for all our distribution partners is a spreadsheet saying these are deep these are the segments that was sold right I swear to you so it is hard for me to tell you who our audience customers are in the last month yes we we're doing you know 2025 in audience we're doing [Music] okay so I can add the audience of 100 K plus 250 and data you're doing about 350 grand a month got it okay but but it's hard to predict cuz one they'll buy one month and then wait seven months to do it again or our organizations like you know so we are a very big WPP partner right got him like people like you deliver people like Procter & Gamble you know so we see month-on-month buying from them and is going up yes there definitely you know small client that will come by $20 for from data one month and we will never see them again on this on the south side of the business what's your gross churn per month I mean I assume it's almost nothing or negative net right okay got it I mean but you've only just to be clear you vulnerability been doing the data kind of SAS play for a little over 12 months right [Music] okay and what do you pay to acquire big customers I mean you can spend a lot to acquire one of the CEO but I also sell with them so that so what's your team size eight okay so three of you are focused on sales so you can think of an average sale cycle for Klein has been about 45 days wow that's pretty fast these two are paying you like 20 grand per month on average got it okay and then what about what about I mean are you doing things like like paid media spend like sponsoring conferences things like that okay no so all the money you've raised and whatever on all your profits remember you're reinvesting really your biggest expenses people there's no variable paid marketing spend [Music] doing anything and when we have run things like we tweet out and then what is your where's most the team based what location our US team is split between New York and so so engineering our US engineering is based in our u.s. our US team size right now is about 10 yep we have a team in Singapore our Singapore team size is about 12 and the rest of the people are based in India [Music] instance you know we do things like a segment that is bought a lot from us our Walmart visitors right so so we we map points of interests well what do you mean Walmart visitors they wouldn't mean they buy from you I thought companies bought from you oh I see it's Amazon a buyer you know you know you might find Amazon as about a segment from Oracle but Amazon is not a it's not a not a client yet forgot it so so so we have a team that is this mapping out every point point of interest in every country where we are you know they for instance our biggest selling segments is b2b segments in Oracle like fortune 500 companies and fortune 500 company office every office every part of the US this whole manual acquisition work that drives a lot of last question before we wrap up its election-related can you tell on Election Day like I'm just curious here it's like 3:00 p.m. the polls are gonna close in three hours can you tell based off your pixel which like let's say I think I'm gonna win most evangelical kind of Christian voters and can I actually see and send a text to people who have not location-wise been to a voting booth to remind him to go vote [Music] was for the GOTV part of the so what we did for this particular party who spend way less on feet on the street than the other party we were monitoring every polling booth every polling location in a certain number of states and we were telling the ground team your data it might just to be clear your data it is that tight it is real-time that's impressive [Music] many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every b2b staff CEO that I've interviewed if you want to get access to the database I've created with the year-over-year growth rates customer counts margins and many many other data metrics and data points you go to GE c LH c ka kaam here's the thing though this is a database I keep it to myself it's so freakin valuable and you preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage I'm only letting 10 companies on each month so we're full this month but you gonna get lucky calm to get on the waiting list for next month and look there's big people on the waiting list I mean the biggest meeseeks you've ever heard of you've probably heard of them they're big private wait billions and billions under management so it's an impressive waiting let's go get on now and get flat calm because I get asked all the time Nathan you host all these interviews hundreds of them per month how do you do them efficiently and guys the answer is simple people always great to my calendar back-to-back meetings I batch my injuries to say very efficient and the way that I do it is I use a tool called a acuity scheduling that Nathan laughs get calm /schedule and the reason I use them is very simple they keep my no-show rate for very low because they send out reminders about when the interview where the meeting is coming up and also they make it very easy to schedule time right go back and forth via email 10,000 times with people I'm trying to meet with hey Nate collected pom /schedule helps me so much and by the way look are you like have so many meetings I'm the best in meetings okay I do them back-to-back very very efficient you guys know me many people send the most efficient they've ever seen okay so I use the tool it's so efficient and by the way I got gout and I said Gavin he's a Cu I said I want a great deal for my people he said Nathan well most people get a 14-day trial isn't that great I said no he's gonna ate the 45 day free trial at Nathan Micah calm /schedule that's not gonna stay up forever so go get it now Nathan Milaca calm /schedule very interesting okay let's wrap up an India with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book new new things what's it called the new thing number two is there CEO you're studying right now [Music] number three is their favorite online tool you have like a QT scheduling which what do you use do you like Gmail number four how many hours of sleep do you every night yeah okay and what's your situation married single you have kids [Music] one daughter okay and in India how old are you okay last question take us back 32 years what do you wish your 20 year old self knew dream class are you for you a big drinker I [Laughter] wish studied harder when I was twenty years old yeah very good guys there you have it from an India he would have drank less and studied harder traded the books portray to the beer cans for more books right he launched his company his current company back in mobile wallet back in 2013-2014 raised four million bucks in venture capital did 1 million in revenue 2015 went up to 4 million revenue but this was really just solving a cash flow problem he was doing this just on media spend in 2016 they stopped with the media spending which gave them leverage with big data partners and started focusing more on a SAS based kind of data play which they did 750 grand in 2016 they're now growing that and ideally doing in 2017 about 5.1 million dollars in projected revenue but if we just look at the data stream revenue stream they've growing almost 20x year-over-year from 12 K last June to 250 or last May to 172k this may they'll do in June about 250 K just on that segment a team of 38 based all throughout the world but headquartered in New York City again helping anyone mainly b2b folks but sometimes as we discussed an election group getting accurate data about mobile customers may be the biggest may be the best and India thank you for taking us to the top if you enjoyed an into TA go back and listen a camera in yesterday he's a coach and I asked him Cameron how can you charge 80 grand per year for one consulting gig and go listen to find out [Music]