How myHQ Hit 25,000 Bookings in June 2023 and 1,000 Corporate Customers in India (Interview with CEO Utkarsh Kawatra)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, myhq.in 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 coworking spaces. They processed 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, the WeWork, etcetera. They're

00:28growing nicely. They were acquired by a larger company, Anarock, last year after going to basically zero during COVID. They'd raised 1,500,000 in capital to date, again, now growing inside of Anarock. 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 freedom and flexibility to work in any way from anywhere. Utkarsh, you ready to

00:53take us to the top?

Utkarsh Kawatra

00:54>> Yes. Absolutely. Alright.

Customer Story: How myHQ Works

Nathan Latka

00:55Give me an example just to help people understand what you do. Tell me a customer story. How do they use you today?

Utkarsh Kawatra

01:00>> Got it. So it's essentially a marketplace for workspaces. What a person does is a lot of people moved hybrid or post COVID and 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 altogether. That's

01:23>> for an individual. And similarly, for a lot of companies, the company admin gets onboarded on the SaaS 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. That's it.

Nathan Latka

01:36Okay. So so I'm on the site right now, myhq. In, it says select city. So I'm gonna pick I'm gonna pick Hyderabad. Right? So is this first off, is this just for folks doing remote work in India?

Utkarsh Kawatra

01:49>> Yes. We are currently just in India.

Nathan Latka

01:51Okay. So I click on so I click on Hyderabad, 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?

Marketplace Model and WeWork Partnership

Utkarsh Kawatra

02:02>> Oh, WeWork is one of our partners. So WeWork would be let's we are a marketplace. WeWork is one of the space providers. So you can just download the myhq app. Just download and you can book any of the WeWork's in India as an example.

Nathan Latka

02:14It's as simple as that.

Utkarsh Kawatra

02:15>> 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.

Revenue Model and Take Rate

Nathan Latka

02:31So just to make this very clear, you're a marketplace. A marketplace has supply and demand. Your supply is WeWork or or people with physical workspace. Demand is a company a company with remote workers and your matchmaking in between.

Utkarsh Kawatra

02:44>> Sure. Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

02:45Yeah. How do you make money?

Utkarsh Kawatra

02:47>> I don't like to call ourselves a Tinder for this, but, yes, in a way, you're right.

Nathan Latka

02:51So how do you make money?

Utkarsh Kawatra

02:54>> We make money on the bookings. It's as simple as that. It's Okay. If a company You can also call it an Airbnb if you want to call it. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

03:01The company uses your platform with a remote worker and that remote worker signs up for a Hyderabad office, which is powered by WeWork. And let's say it's $200 a month. How much will you make on that?

Utkarsh Kawatra

03:11>> So we make roughly about 60 in that.

Key Metrics: Bookings and Occupancy

Nathan Latka

03:15Okay. So you're you're taking 30%?

Utkarsh Kawatra

03:17>> Yeah. 25, 30%. Correct.

Nathan Latka

03:1930% take rate. Okay. Interesting. And I guess, what's the right metric that you measure to understand the health of your marketplace? Is it percent of GMV, like total GMV, or what is it?

Utkarsh Kawatra

03:30>> I think it's so there are company usually, companies measure in the base of number of companies onboarded. 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. And that's the that's the metric that we try to track in and grow that week on week, day by day, or month by month.

Nathan Latka

03:50Interesting. So so last month in June 2023, what was the total number of bookings?

Utkarsh Kawatra

03:56>> Oh, we would have gotten about 20,000 bookings.

Nathan Latka

04:0020,000. So, again, just because that's 20,000 remote workers picking a workspace using your tool all in last just in June.

Utkarsh Kawatra

04:09>> 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 Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Bombay. Interesting.

Nathan Latka

04:21Sorry. Bombay, Bangalore, what was the last one?

Utkarsh Kawatra

04:24>> Delhi. Delhi NCR. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

04:27So what? Like eighteen, nineteen thousand of those all went through those three cities?

Utkarsh Kawatra

04:31>> It's correct. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:33Wow. And what's the average ticket size? Is it 200 a month or something different?

Utkarsh Kawatra

04:37>> The ticket sizes, per booking, you're looking at about 300, 400 for nine, which is roughly you're looking at about, $8. $5.

Nathan Latka

04:49Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

05:12your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna get

05:37a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is not

05:59built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're going

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07:14So the average ticket size sorry. I don't understand. When a remote worker books a a place in Bangalore through your platform, what's the average price per month gonna be?

Utkarsh Kawatra

07:21>> It's a per day booking. Right? It's a 2 thou 20,000. Yeah. It's a 20,000 per day bookings, which you've gotten. So that's about $5.

Nathan Latka

07:31Okay. That's a GMV. And then you're gonna take 20 to 30% of that.

Booking Volume and Ticket Sizes Explained

Utkarsh Kawatra

07:34>> Correct. Correct. Correct.

Nathan Latka

07:35Oh, I see. I see. I see. Okay. Interesting. Do any of the per day bookings turn into a per week or per month or per year?

Utkarsh Kawatra

07:41>> So we have those as well. Those are we have about we do about thousand such bigger transactions there. So from that 20,000, there'll be about thousand who also take up per month bookings, which will be roughly translating to about about a $120 a month.

Nathan Latka

07:59I see. So myhq in June 2023 processed 20,000 unique bookings at an average ticket size of $5, which would be a $100,000 of GMV of which your take rate is 20 to 30%, which mean you're doing between 20 and 30,000 per month in revenue. Is that alright?

Utkarsh Kawatra

08:18>> Yes. You are roughly you've fit the hill. If you include the monthly passes, that'll double the number, but that that's somewhat yeah. Yeah. Some Some And if you're doing if

Nathan Latka

08:28you'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?

Utkarsh Kawatra

08:35>> So one year ago, we were roughly at one third of this. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:40One third? Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. So you've grown nicely. Okay. So how did you saw taking now that we understand the economics, let's get the backstory here. When did you launch the business?

Company History: Launch, COVID, and Anarock Acquisition

Utkarsh Kawatra

08:50>> So we launched quite some quite a time back. We launched around 2016, 2017. But then COVID happened. We went to zero. Yeah. The three waves there. And then last year, we also got merged with a bigger real estate entity. So we're now part of a big sort of an IPC comparable in India called Anarock. So we merged with them. So, yeah, we started from scratch literally last year again.

Nathan Latka

09:18Did was that an all stock deal or what did Anarock pay for the business?

Utkarsh Kawatra

09:22>> Combination of cash and stock.

Nathan Latka

09:24Okay. Why why did you sell?

Utkarsh Kawatra

09:27>> So we realized for us to crack corporates, I think one thing which I realized was in case of SaaS, 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 Anarock 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 have opened

09:49>> a lot more corporate doors, 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, fastly.

Deal Terms: Press Reports, Cash vs Stock, and $1.5M Raised

Nathan Latka

10:10Mhmm. Interesting. Okay. That makes sense. And it was public. What was the price? 75% stake for a 125 crore. Is that right?

Utkarsh Kawatra

10:21>> Somewhat.

10:24>> I I I I I am unfortunately, cannot disclose that, but, yeah, somewhat the numbers were a bit haywire there. But yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:29For my for my US audience, can you can you convert that for us? What is a 125 crore?

Utkarsh Kawatra

10:35>> 125 would be roughly about 15,000,000 as the number. That's the number.

Nathan Latka

10:40Okay. 15,000,000. So, again, you can't confirm or deny that, but let's say the press reports are accurate and it was a 15,000,000 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?

Utkarsh Kawatra

10:55>> 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 a so as a founder, you're always trying to save money, not spend a lot on yourself. So you want to obviously get some return of that for that you put until date and then keep a strong view on the upside in the future. So everyone who bets on the business, they

11:17>> are also looking at me getting a potential exit in the next 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 I generally look at the cash as something that for the effort that I put in till date. That's the cash that I'm looking at. And then I'd look to keep that upside for the

11:40>> later date either way for future

Nathan Latka

11:43So how much how much cash had you raised at the company before the exit?

Utkarsh Kawatra

11:47>> So we had raised about million and a half.

Nathan Latka

11:51Okay. 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 1,500,000 of the deal was cash upfront because you're making your current investors whole, and the rest you guys could take as upside as equity in Anarock.

Utkarsh Kawatra

12:06>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

12:07Interesting. Okay. I mean, let's say it was a $15,000,000 deal price. If you're doing 30,000 a month today in revenue up from $10,000 a month last year and last year is when you did the deal. I mean, that's a 120,000 of ARR for basically someone paid 15,000,000 for that. Again, if the reports are accurate, that's a huge multiple.

Utkarsh Kawatra

12:25>> Yeah. That's what think. The number the number on the press was a bit wrong, I would say.

Nathan Latka

12:30Let me just put it in. See. Okay. Okay.

Building Supply: The Chicken and Egg Problem

Nathan Latka

12:34Talk to me about so you launched in 2016. Anyone listening right now wanting to launch a marketplace. I understand the chicken and the egg problem is very real. How did you convince how did you convince the first workspaces like WeWork in India to list on your platform? And how did you find the first, you know, renter?

Utkarsh Kawatra

12:49>> They took a while. WeWork was not up and running with us for a good three, four years. I think what we we it's a chicken and problem. We first started with the supply. We got some supply where we got some partner space, who knew us through our networks, maybe. I think that's the first place we started with. That sort of What started are

Nathan Latka

13:10the name of those places? So they weren't WeWorks, but what are the name of the They co working

Utkarsh Kawatra

13:13>> were small standalone real estate owners. You've got something like a Wok, which is a co working operator in Delhi. You've got Zootish, which was a restaurant which we converted to a co working space. So we have a wide variety of spaces. And 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. And we had like about ten, fifteen of those. But then

13:41>> over time, obviously, as we start getting more and more then we got some more and more brands. And over time, we've got most of the brands coming in with us. Yeah. But it's it's a long journey. I honestly, maybe we did it right or wrong. I'm not too sure. But that's that's the path we took where we started small, got got the flywheel running. And from there on, we start kind of increasing the kind of partners

14:07>> we got.

Supply and Demand Numbers Today

Nathan Latka

14:08And let's just focus on supply demand real quick. Today, how many unique location providers does the supply are on your platform?

Utkarsh Kawatra

14:17>> Oh, we would have about 2,000.

Nathan Latka

14:21Wow. Okay. And how many how many unique companies have used you to help one of their employees find a workspace for a day?

Utkarsh Kawatra

14:31>> So we help about 150 companies. Would be currently, we'll have about about thousand companies who are using us right now.

Nathan Latka

14:43Okay. So a thousand companies made 20 the last six months. Yeah. Made, like, over 20,000.

Utkarsh Kawatra

14:49>> And we're using us. We're using us as well, still.

Nathan Latka

14:51Yeah. I'm trying to actually use the numbers that my audience understands what using us means. So the thousand companies did at least one booking in the past thirty days.

Utkarsh Kawatra

14:59>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:00Okay. Interesting. And on average, they do about 20 bookings. Right? A thousand times a 20,000 bookings?

Utkarsh Kawatra

15:06>> Yes. You can give that number. And as I said, there are monthly bookings as well. What what I was that that day. What what I said 20,000 was the day bookings, then there are monthly bookings of about thousand as well.

Nathan Latka

15:15Oh, I see. I see. I see. Oh my god.

Utkarsh Kawatra

15:17>> What said. The number was the number you gave me was much lower. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:21Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So 20,000 I thought you said you did 20,000 total bookings in all of June. That's your daily rate.

Utkarsh Kawatra

15:27>> The day bookings, then there are monthly bookings as well.

Nathan Latka

15:30Oh, how many total bookings did you do in June?

Utkarsh Kawatra

15:32>> So total would be about 25,000. Yeah.

15:37>> And the monthly bookings will have a higher ticket size.

Nathan Latka

15:43Okay. Sorry. We're talking about two different metrics. When you say 20,000 daily bookings, what I'm thinking is then multiply that times thirty days in June. Right? So then you did 6,000,000 total bookings. Yeah. What you're what you're telling me is yeah. So in so just to be clear, repeat this back to my audience.

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:00>> 25,000 total bookings?

Nathan Latka

16:02Yeah. In June.

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:03>> And there'll be about 2,000 which are of a higher ticket size. 20,000 will be of the lower ticket size.

Nathan Latka

16:09Yes. You guys get that. Right? So again, in June, there are a thousand companies that paid for some duration through myhq. 20,000 of the durations were a daily duration, and the other 5,000 were either a weekly, a monthly, or an annual 100% right. Yes. Okay. We're on the same page now.

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:27>> Sorry. I I didn't realize I I was taking so much time to make No. You're good. Business. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

16:33Okay. So how do you what's the team size today?

Team Size and Future Plans

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:35>> We are about 70 people.

Nathan Latka

16:37Seven zero?

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:38>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:39Interesting. And are you still having fun? Or are we gonna read in the press that you leave the company and launch something new next week?

Utkarsh Kawatra

16:46>> I think if anything, you'll read positive about the market where we are getting some good tires on board and expanding further.

Nathan Latka

16:54Okay. That's a that's a he dodged the question. So what's your new idea? When are you launching it?

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:00>> No. Nothing. 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 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.

Nathan Latka

17:22Yep. Yep. Well, we're rooting

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:23>> for We'll

Rapid Fire: Books, Tools, and Life

Nathan Latka

17:25we're rooting for you. We'll see what happens. We're out of time, though, for today. So let's wrap up here, Utkarsh, with the famous vibe. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:33>> Atomic Habits.

Nathan Latka

17:34Number

17:35number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:39>> Elon Musk, you cannot ignore him. Right? Yep.

Nathan Latka

17:42Number three, what's your favorite online tool?

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:46>> I use, Zoho quite often in WhatsApp. I think WhatsApp business runs on WhatsApp, pretty much.

17:52>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

17:53Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Utkarsh Kawatra

17:56>> Six.

Nathan Latka

17:57Okay. And situation, married, single, kids?

Utkarsh Kawatra

18:00>> Single.

Nathan Latka

18:01Okay. No kids. And how old are you?

Utkarsh Kawatra

18:03>> I'm 32.

18:05>> 32.

Nathan Latka

18:06Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Closing Advice and Wrap-Up

Utkarsh Kawatra

18:10>> Running a business, you find it fancy, but it's not fancy. It's it's supposed to be boring things doing doing good boring things every day.

Nathan Latka

18:19Good boring things every day. Guys, myhq. In 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 coworking spaces. They processed over 25,000 total bookings in June, of which 20,000 of those bookings were for a daily seat at one of these spaces,

18:47the restaurant, the WeWork, etcetera. They're growing nicely. They were acquired by a larger company, Anarock, last year after going to basically zero during COVID. They'd raised 1,500,000 in capital to date, again, now growing inside of Anarock. We'll see what happens next. Utkarsh, thanks for taking us to the top.

Utkarsh Kawatra

19:01>> Okay. Thanks, Nathan. Pleasure.

Nathan Latka

19:03One 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

19:28Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

19:50fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign

20:12up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am

Utkarsh Kawatra

20:27>> on these shows, but I

Nathan Latka

20:28do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. All right. I'll be in the comments. See you.