How Numberz CEO Aditya Tulsian grew to $222K revenue and 1.2K customers in 2017.

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 their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per top 5 and6 million he is help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit sold Mark and I'm your host Nathan Latka okay top tribe this week's winner of the $1100 is Rich Jones Okay Rich Jones he is stuck in corporate he wants to break free he's binging on the show for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning simply subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it Nathan lka here this is episode 577 coming up tomorrow morning you'll learn from Andrew Meers of Ripple recruiting which just passed 8,000 ivy league resumes with 15 employees ERS paying 300 bucks per month for Access good morning folks Nathan L here our guest this morning is Addie tulsian he launched and LEDs multiple small business focused software service and mobile offerings at Inuit India he's also Management Consultant at Diamond Consultants which is now PWC he's also a product manager he's got an MBA and he's doing very big things especially in the SMB SAS space Addie are you ready to take us to the top um so hi everyone this is a pleasure being over here um so so so why don't you start us off so just let's uh let's just get context real quick so tell us what what your company the current company You're Building what it's called and how you generate Revenue with it our company is called numbers and the way we do it is we are trying to create a platform for small and medium businesses in India and across the globe where they can manage their day-to-day cash flow and the way we generate Revenue is by providing them both software as well as various Financial Services products uh that we get through partnering with financial institutions so is the majority of your Revenue kind of software as a service it's like a 50/50 split 50% comes from the software as a service and 50% comes from the commissions that we get from the financi institutions okay great so let's walk us through an example of of a real customer using you guys tell us that story so let's take up a company called nh1 design nh1 is basically into graphic design and um they go out and invoice uh big sort of corporate 5 fore 500 customers for the design work that they do now this nh1 design basically uses our platform to create the invoices and send it to those big corporates now whenever these many of these Corp actually do not pay them you know more before 60 days or sometimes even 90 days so they then use our platform to get invoice discounting on these you know invoices that they've created against these big corporates so not only does the small business actually benefit from a platform that's very simple to use and manage their invoicing process but they actually then use our Partnerships with uh you know financial institutions to actually get advances on those invoices so just to be clear this is like uh I would use you if I have if I invoice a company that owes me $30,000 worth of work but it's on a 45 day term so they they takes them 45 days to pay me I could basically use that invoice submit it to you guys and you're going to help Advance some of that cash early on absolutely interesting okay so this is almost like I mean you're almost like kind of investing I gu it's it's almost like debt investing against receivables something like that right absolutely so it's it's basically receivable financing so not only do we provide them the entire receivable management software but you also get receivable financing through our partners okay so let's focus on the SAS side of this first so so numbers do. you said 50% comes from SAS what are your pricing plans uh we basically currently have two pricing plans the first pricing plan is pretty much premium wherein you know if you are a young startup or you have a very simple business um and you're not doing much volume you can start using our platform for free cost uh but then it sort of goes onto a paid version okay which basically gets onto um in terms of Indian rupees it is 10,000 Indian rupees per year which is approximately uh $175 uh per year uh and then uh you know you also have to pay we also enable with payment gateways and some of the other payment options and then you pay for every transaction got it so on average what's your average customer currently paying you our average customer ends up paying somewhere around about or the overall realization is anywhere between uh you know 185 to $195 okay so $185 a month or a year a year a year okay got it uh and then okay so let's go now that we understand a little bit more about actually actually so that's that's the yearly RPO on the SAS side what do they pay in in transaction fees typically to you the transaction fee comes to somewhere around about 2% of every transaction that is done on the platform so and on an average they end up doing anywhere between U you know s about 5,000 to 7 a half thousand US dollars every year on an average and so we get a 2% of that so just to be clear the a your average customer uh you know they are submitting around 5 to 7.5 th000 worth of invoices to you guys annually that you then kind of forward that money earlier than the invoice due date is that accurate uh I'm sorry I just say that uh it's 5,000 to 75,000 US dollar worth of transactions on the platform uh but what happens is if you are invoicing to a large customer it does the it does not go through the payment gateways right so then the uh the invoicing that really gets discounted are actually of a much higher value I see okay so of the 50% of your Revenue coming from transaction fees the Fe the the the transaction sizes those fees are coming from average between 5 and 7.5k per one of your customers however there are much larger invoices that are processed on a different payment scheme or or is there no transaction fee on those no so then there's no transaction fee because uh those fees have been paid directly from One bank to the other so we really don't come to the picture got it okay good that makes sense all right let's get some more history here so Addie before you started this you were working at in t India is that right yeah and so what were you doing there so I was a business head and uh AAR who's my co-founder he was a product head and what so what walk us through the kind of the life decision you made to leave kind of a probably a safe you know maybe fun thing add into it to start your own thing how old were you when you made the jump we were I was 34 when I made the jump and did you have family and kids or no I have a family yeah but no kids so far so did you have a bunch in savings I mean did you know no matter what even if the new business failed that you'd still be good or what gave you the confidence to quit quit corporate so actually just before actually quitting um I and my wife had started off a design agency and uh you know it had been in existence for two and a half years and it had it was been very well so I knew that uh at once level my wife has already settled and there was sort of money coming into the bank uh so that kind of security was already there I see and how many kids did you have at the time uh no we I said we don't have kids oh you don't okay got it so just you and okay what year was that when you left uh when you left into it and launched numbers uh 2015 oh 2015 okay so fairly recently yeah and then W us this is always an embarrassing number usually but you remember what your first year Revenue was at numbers yeah it was exactly uh so I can tell you in in the US dollar terms we had just dra about uh $5,000 odd US dollars in all 2015 right your first year yeah that's and actually got that money really that at that point of time we had not built any software we were we always you know believed in this Lean Startup principle so we actually started trying to help our customers get uh you know invoice discounting from our partner financial institutions without actually with any any software so that we could learn the entire process um and uh so therefore while even before we started our entire process uh you we spent a lot of time on ground just just trying to get our customers uh these working Capital Loans and that's where we actually earning our our dollars that's that's funny and then walk us through uh to last year 2016 what was total revenue um so 2016 we've you know crossed nearly around about um uh I would say now we are uh we closed this on about $85,000 uh in total revenue got it so $85,000 in 2016 um total revenue that's great and then walk us forward through today how many customers are you serving and it's what is it January 2017 yeah so now we have more than 5,500 small businesses on the platform are those customers or users these are customers these are individual small businesses and then they will have multi-users so in terms of total number of users we we have I think so 8 and a half to 9,000 users but in terms of unique businesses we have 5,500 okay so if you're uh if you you have 5,500 customers and you told me earlier your average revenue per user is 185 bucks per year if I divide that by 12 it's 15 bucks a month can I take 15 bucks a month times 5,500 customers to get about 84 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue yeah that's accurate yeah see also what happens is a lot of our customers also as I said are premium customers right and uh so you know those customers of course don't pay us well so hold on yeah that's why I wanted to really clear there when I say how many customers do you have I mean how many have given you a credit card and are paying you not premium so so you have 5500 that that are paying you on a credit card or no uh no no no not all of them are pay no okay sorry so how many paying customers do you have so I think right now our paying customers would be almost close to if I'm not wrong um just give me one sec we've crossed uh I think we'll have around about 1200 paying customers right oh great okay so so if I take do do I take 1,200 paying customers times a $15 RP to get $18,000 in monthly occurring revenue is that accurate yeah okay why why I'm why did you say when I said 84 Grand earlier why did you say that that was accurate did I confuse you or something so so actually what happens is we also start getting money from the banks or FIS right oh I see this is just your SAS Revenue stream so what you're saying is when you add all your Revenue together you're doing somewhere around 80 grand per month yes oh okay so walk me through that growth because you just told me in in all of 2016 you did about 85 Grand in total revenue so now you're doing that almost monthly and we're only a month into 2017 how did you grow that fast I'm sorry I think you know U I got two things wrong with you okay I said at had 85,000 Grand in 2016 as yearly Revenue right that is what I have uh and I have 1,200 paying custom customers right uh which basically becomes around about uh you know 70 odd 75 odd dollar per customer paying customer right now um so this has that's annually and this has increase for example when we started off our journey in the initial months you know we actually priced our our uh things very low okay eventually we kept increasing our pricing and therefore now the pricing is is close to what I shared with you and that's where we now also started getting the uh both in terms of SAS Revenue per year as well as a transaction fee per year plus what we're getting from the uh Banks the number I'm trying to get at though Addie is today January 2017 what is just from the SAS side of your business what is your monthly recurring Revenue our C Revenue will be you know 1200 into um you know 175 divide by 12 no okay got it so so again if I do 1 12200 multipli by 185 divided by 12 I get 18,500 per month in monthly recurring Revenue just from the SAS side of your business and you're just to confirm that's accurate correct yeah okay great all right good so let's move on because that's just one half of your business you said the other half are from Banks and transaction fees and things like this how are you how are you you have 1,200 customers that's impressive you're only you know a year old how are you getting these customers where are they coming from so we have actually three channels of acquisition the first channel of acquisition is we use a lot of online marketing we go to very specific areas where we have our Target customers and we acquire them online the other thing that we do is you know as you would say the moment you create anything that's to do with financials the accountants uh ecosystem come into place so we actually work with a lot of accountants across the ecosystem who then in turn give us their clients uh to start on the platform and the third piece is we partner with other platforms uh example who are serving small businesses themselves uh and they then actually offer our uh uh offerings to their current customers so we basically use three channels one again I said direct through online marketing second through accountants and third through other platforms for serving small businesses the paid acquisition stuff you're doing per month how much are you spending per month on paid acquisition the paid Acquisitions is um okay so let me say our cost of acquisition right now uh for a PID is nearly close to us $150 okay so you're spending about 150 bucks to acquire a new customer is that accurate yes okay and which which churn have any of your 1,200 customers left and if so how many leave on average per month so our churn rate usually um the initial churn rate was was high honestly High by high mean we were almost losing close to you know 3% of our base every month u in the first 6 months of uh uh 2016 uh but now what we get is you know almost um you know our retention rate is 85% for the people who have sign monthly um so you know since we just been one year so from that perspective I would say you know we calculate based on a three-month cycle we say every quarter how many people have been retained from our uh from the time they've signed up okay and that number 85% is 85% so now from the people who have uh joined our platform since August 2016 we have retained 85% of those in as of January okay so you have a about so you have about a 3% or 4% monthly turn rate then yeah so uh so we basically start calculating these things as from April sorry from August last year and I said you know 85% of them are still onto a platform yeah but if i s have to take August J February Mar April Jun August September October November December January that's 6 months and you uh you lose about 15% of your base over 6 months right so it's about between 2 and 3% uh customer turn monthly right yeah so from exact calculation perspective it really comes somewhere just two because it's slly compounded so yes it is it and and and how big is your team today we are 37 people and where are you based we are based in uh New Delhi in India and they out of Two Cities New Delhi and Bangalore oh very good all right great let's uh last question here before we get into the final few questions what uh is self-funded have you raised Capital yeah we raised Capital we have uh two marking investors behind us um you know one is the gentleman call Mr VOD kosla um so um he has two funds one is of course kosla uh ventures in the US and another fund called kosla impact uh which works in Emerging Markets so they have funded us and the other company is called K Capital which is another one of the Mary seed investors here in India so how much have you raised total we've raised nearly uh 650k US dollar okay is that all on a convertible note or is that an equity round it's an equity round okay very good well hey uh Addie this is wonderful let's wrap up here with the famous five the first one is what is your favorite Business book um it's actually good to grade number two is there a CEO you're following or studying right now actually I love a you know my ex CEO Brad Smith uh who heads into it number three is there a favorite online tool you have like acurity scheduling uh more than I actually you slack I love slack the most because it really makes my life easier great number four yes or no do you get eight hours of sleep every night I'm sorry I didn't get that question do you sleep eight hours every night it's seven seven okay good so close and you said you have no kids uh you're married and how old are you no I'm 36 okay so last question Addy take us back 16 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew I just wish that you would have taken the chance at 20 itself instead of having to wait for 34 top tribe there you have it Addie says he would have taken a chance earlier instead of waiting till he was 34 he's raised 650 Grand from venod kosha and other top tier investors launched a little over a year and a half ago now serving over 1,200 paying customers paying 15 bucks a month for about 18 Grand in SAS Revenue he also does revenue through banks and transaction volume he's gotten churn down to 3% or 2% gross monthly spending about 150 bucks to acquire a new company helping again folks get smarter and really get financing against their invoices payable in the future with his team of 37 based in New Delhi India Addie thank you for taking us to the top thanks on if you enjoyed episode 577 go back and listen to yesterday's episode with Road I simply asked will this mold payment startup survive top drive I love giving away free money I feel like o we're giving away cars and I have something special for you today how many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about succcess they've had with Facebook and Google ads well all of you listening right now yes if 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