How myHQ CEO Utkarsh Kawatra grew to $360K revenue and 1K customers in 2023.

guys my HQ dot I am launched in 2016 today they do about 30 000 a month in Revenue up from 10 000 a month just a year ago and they do this by connecting remote workers in India with workspaces that are available through Partners like wework and other restaurants they've converted to co-working spaces they process over twenty five thousand total bookings in June of which 20 000 of those bookings were for a daily seat at one of these spaces the restaurant that we work etc they're growing nicely they were acquired by a larger company and Iraq last year after going to basically zero during Cova they'd raised 1.5 million in capital to date again now growing inside of anarach we'll see what happens next hey folks my guest today is utkarsh kawatra he is a it IIT Delhi graduate started his company myhq in 2016 with a mission to empower today's Workforce with Friedman flexibility to work in any way from anywhere at cars you ready tickets to the top yes absolutely all right all right give me an example just to help people understand what you do tell me a customer Story how do they use you today got it so it's essentially a Marketplace for workspaces what a person does is a lot of people moved hybrid or post covet and uh they're working from home they get tired working from home they need to work out of a co-working space close by they just download the myhq app they can see all the spaces close by book any of the spaces on a per day basis or per hour basis or book meeting rooms all together that's for an individual and similarly for a lot of companies the company admin gets onboarded on the SAS tool and then they can enable their employees to work out of any of the co-working spaces close to their homes or wherever they are okay so so I'm on the site right now myhq.in it says select City so I'm gonna pick uh I'm gonna pick hyper bad right so is this first off is this just for folks doing remote work in India uh yes we're currently yeah okay so I click on so I click on hyper bad and it says the new way to offices it says that flexipass fixed desk and cabins Virtual Office so are you like wework for India oh vivoc is one of our partners so wework would be let's say we are a Marketplace wework is one of the space providers so you can just download them my HQ app just download and you could book any of the v-bucks in India as an example it's as simple as that and then companies what they do is for example bigger companies which are completely hybrid want to enable their employees they're not looking to bring all of them back to office so they have this combination of remote and work from office which is where we kind of help them integrate that seamlessly so just to make this very clear you're a Marketplace a Marketplace has supply and demand your supply is we work or people with physical workspace your demand as a company a company with remote workers and you're matchmaking in between so absolutely yeah how do you make money I don't like to call ourselves a Tinder for this but yes you know you're absolutely right so how do you make money oh we make money on the bookings um it's as simple as that a company uses your platform with a remote work or that remote worker signs up for a hyperbat office which is powered by wework and let's say it's 200 bucks a month how much will you make on that so we make roughly about 60 in that okay so you're you're taking 30 percent yeah 25 30 correct 30 take rate okay interesting and I guess what's the right metric that you measured to understand the health of your Marketplace is it percent of gmv like total gmv or what is it I think it's uh so there are company usually companies measure in the base of number of companies on board it we generally like to measure in terms of usage in terms of occupancy so we want to see the number of Click number of bookings we are getting uh and that's the that's the metric that we try to track in and grow that uh week on week day by day or month by month interesting so so last month in June of 2023 what was the total number of bookings uh we would have gotten about 20 000 bookings 20 000 so again just because that's 20 000 remote workers picking a workspace using your tool all in last uh just in June yes and that I think if you purely ask me that's largely top three cities we've just expanded in the remaining cities in India so we largely Del NCR Bangalore and Bombay interesting uh sorry Bombay Bangalore and what was the last one uh Delhi Delhi is NCR sorry so what like 18 19 000 of those all went through those three cities it's correct yeah wow and what's the average ticket size is it 200 a month or something different the ticket sizes uh uh per booking you're looking at about 300 400 bucks for Naina which is roughly you're looking at about uh eight or dollars five dollars oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from 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a thousand such bigger transactions there so from that twenty thousand there'll be about thousand who also take up uh uh per month bookings which would be roughly translating to about about a hundred twenty dollars a month I see so my HQ in June of 2023 process 20 000 unique bookings and an average ticket size of five bucks which would be a hundred thousand dollars of gmv of which your take rate is 20 to 30 percent which would mean you're doing between 20 and 30 000 per month in revenue is that all right uh yes you are roughly you fit the hill and if you include the monthly passes that will double the number but yeah yeah someone if you're doing if you're doing 20 to 30 000 per month right now in Revenue where were you exactly one year ago so we can calculate growth rate so one year ago we were roughly add one third of this yeah one-third yeah okay got it got it so you've grown nicely okay so how did you saw take now that we understand the economics let's get the back story here when did you launch the business so we launched quite some quite a time back we launched it on 2016 2017 but then kovid happened we went to zero yeah the the three waves there and then uh last year we also got merged with a bigger real estate entity so we're not part of a a big a sort of an IPC comparable in India uh called analog so we merged with them uh so yeah we started from scratch literally last year again did was that an all-stock deal or what did Anna Rock pay for the business uh combination of cash in stock okay why why'd you sell uh so we realized for us to crack corporates I think one thing which I realized was in case of SAS uh when you're trying to pitch to these corporates we want someone to help us open new doors in case of bigger corporates and they have stronger relations with companies like analog where they want where they know that they'll help them with the real estate needs so having such a partner has actually worked well for us they've opened a lot more corporate dose which uh which has helped us grow faster I've heard people so being in the startup ecosystem we've heard people say that it's better to be independent always I think sometimes a strategic partner who's actually very helpful in terms of opening doors can actually build your business rapidly faster interesting okay that makes sense and it was public uh what was the price 75 stake for 125 crore is that right uh somewhat uh I I I I'm unfortunately cannot disclose that but yeah some of the numbers were a bit heavy there but yeah for my for my us audience can you can you convert that for us what is 125 crore 125 would be roughly about 15 million as the number that's the number okay 15 minutes so again you can't confirm or deny that but let's say the Press reports are accurate and it was a 15 million deal price as a Founder thinking about an exit how did you think about what percent to ask for in cash versus earn out versus stock oh honestly I don't think it was a lot of options for a Founder I think you want to work out the best deal possible where you have us so as a Founder you're always trying to save money not spend a lot on yourselves you want to obviously get some return of therefore that you put until date and then keep a strong view on the upside in the future uh so everyone who bets on the business they are also looking at me getting a potential exit in the next three to four two to three to four years so they want us to be also invested in it and I think we are also in that zone that we are also invested in it so I think uh I generally look at the cash is something that for therefore that I've put into date that's the cash that I'm looking at and then I look to keep the upside for the later date either way for future how much how much cash had you raised at the company before the exit so we had raised about a million and a half okay a million and a half so you're again you can't confirm or deny what the actual deal was but what you're saying is you would have been happy if 1.5 million of the deal was cash up front because you're making your current investors whole and the rest you guys could take as upside as equity and Anna Rock yep interesting okay I mean let's say it was a 15 million dollar deal price if you're doing 30 000 a month today in Revenue up from 10 grand a month last year and last year is when you did the deal I mean that's 120 000 of ARR basically someone paid 15 million for that again if the reports are accurate that's a huge multiple yeah that's what I think the number the number on the Press was a bit wrong I would say yeah I see okay okay um okay talk to me uh about um so you launched in 2016. anyone listening right now wanting to launch a Marketplace they understand the Chicken and the Egg problem is very real how did you convince how did you convince the first workspaces like we work in India to list on your platform and how did you find the first you know renter they took a while uh a Reverb was not up and running with us for a good three four years I think what we we it's a technique problem we first started with the supply uh we got some supplier where we got some partner spaces which who knew us through our networks maybe I think that's the first place we started with that sort of what are the names of those places so they weren't wework so what are the names very small Standalone real estate owners uh you've got something like a walk which is a co-working corporate in in Delhi you've got zutis which was a restaurant which we had converted to a co-working space uh so we are a wide variety of spaces and uh starting with some of the restaurants which were completely shut during daytime and converting them to co-working was actually the easiest to begin with uh and we had like about 10 15 of those uh but then over time obviously as we start getting more and customers then we got some more and more Brands and over time we've got most of the Brands coming in with us yeah but uh it's it's a long journey uh I honestly maybe we did it right or wrong I'm not too sure but that's that's the path we took uh where we started small got the supply wheel running and from there on we start kind of increasing the kind of uh Partners we got and let's just focus on Supply demand real quick today how many unique location providers the supplier on your platform oh we would have about two thousand wow okay and how many how many unique companies have used you to help one of their employees find a workspace for a day so be uh help about a 150 companies that would be currently we'd have about thousand companies who are using us right now okay so a thousand companies uh yeah made like over twenty thousand and we're using us we're using us as well yeah I'm trying to actually use the number so that my audience understands what using us means so the Thousand companies did at least one booking in the past 30 days yeah yeah yeah yeah okay interesting and on average they do about 20 bookings right a thousand times twenty thousand bookings yes you can give that number and as I said there are monthly bookings as well what whatever is that that would be what what I said twenty thousand was the day bookings then there are monthly bookings over a thousand as well oh I see I see I see the number was the numbers much lower yeah yeah sorry so twenty thousand I thought you said you did 20 000 total bookings in all of June that's your daily bookings then there are monthly bookings as well oh how many total bookings did you do in June so total would be about 25 000 yeah and the monthly bookings will have a higher ticket size okay sorry we're talking about two different metrics when you say 20 000 daily bookings what I'm thinking is then multiply that times 30 days in June right so then you did six million totals yeah man what you're what you're telling me is yeah so so just to be clear to repeat this back to my audience yeah in June and there'll be about 2 000 which are offer higher ticket size 20 000 rupee of the lower ticket size yeah so you guys get that right so again in June there are a thousand companies that paid for some duration through my HQ twenty thousand of the durations were a daily duration and the other five thousand were either a weekly a monthly or an annual operation 100 yes okay we're on the same page now sorry I I didn't realize I was taking so much time to make no you're good in the business sorry okay so how do you what's the team size today we are about 70 people seven zero yeah interesting and are you still having fun or are we going to read in the press that you leave the company and launch something new next week well I think if anything you'll read positive about the market where we're getting some good tires on board and expanding further okay that's a that's a that's a he dodged a question so what's your new idea when are you launching it I'm quite happy here to be honest yeah I think that's what a lot of it's interesting a lot of Founders have asked me that now you've kind of yeah sold it to some extent why Why not start something again I'm like I've not seen the end of this I think this just I want to reach the end where this becomes a big big business yeah yeah oh we're rooting for you we'll see what happens we're out of time though for today uh so let's wrap up here uh harsh with the famous five number one what's your favorite book Atomic habits simple number number two is there a CEO you're following or studying uh Elon Musk you cannot ignore him right yeah number three what's your favorite online tool uh I use uh Soho quite often in WhatsApp I think WhatsApp business runs and WhatsApp pretty much yeah number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night six okay and situation married single kids single okay no kids and how old are you I'm 32 32 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. um running a business you find it fancy but it's not fancy it's supposed to be boring things doing doing good boring things every day good boring things every day guys my HQ that I am launched in 2016 today they do about 30 000 a month in Revenue up from 10 000 a month just a year ago and they do this by connecting remote workers in India with workspaces that are available through Partners like wework and other restaurants they've converted to co-working spaces they process over 25 000 total bookings in June of which 20 000 of those bookings were for a daily seat at one of these spaces the restaurant that we work etc they're growing nicely they were acquired by a larger company and Iraq uh last year after going to basically zero during Coba they'd raised 1.5 million in capital today again now growing inside of anorak we'll see what happens next at karsh thanks for taking us to the top okay thanks Nathan pleasure one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1 pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry 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