How Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta grew Mobilewalla 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...