How Rev grew Rev to $10M revenue and 6.1K customers in 2025.

Nathan Latka (00:01) Hey folks, my guest today is Adi Batha. He's the CEO and co-founder of Rev with 2Vs, an AI platform for transforming how auto shops handle ADS calibrations. That's for cars. He's a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, previously product and engineering at companies like Misfits Market, Walmart, and Jet.com. Adi, you ready to take us to the top? Adi Bathla (00:19) Let's do it. Nathan Latka (00:21) All right, cars are becoming more like computers and your bet is that repair shops are not ready. Tell me more about what you're building. Adi Bathla (00:28) Absolutely. ⁓ at Rev we're building the platform to manage ADAS workflows. It is the largest operating system to manage ADAS workflows. And what that means is cars today have ⁓ sensors, cameras, modules, electronics that power features like adaptive cruise control, lane keep. the industry has really been hit by a brick wall where due to government made... they have percolated majority of the car park and it's a tectonic shift for the technician who's been used to repairing the bumper, the fender, the quarter panel with their hands to now work with mats, targets and lasers. It's more physics and more akin to a skilled engineer to repair a car and we help them navigate all of the net new and put safe cars back on the road. Nathan Latka (01:18) So you're selling directly to repair shops like Paul here at Paul, Paul Bostel. Adi Bathla (01:23) Yes, absolutely, Pabostl is a very special customer, he the first dollar in the business. But yes, we are selling to repair shops and we're selling to any business that touches a car after it's been sold. your collision shops, body collision shops, your mechanical shops, dealerships, glass shops, PDR, you name it. Nathan Latka (01:47) Interesting. Okay, and how many of these are there in the US just so everyone can understand the market size? Adi Bathla (01:53) Yeah, absolutely. mean, if you're combining the all the FNICPs that I'm mentioning today, there's about 300 to 400,000 of these businesses across, I'd say, North America. Nathan Latka (02:08) And give me a sense, well we want to get more of your back story here, but I want my audience to understand sort of what you're charging on average to these repair shops. What's the average one paying you per month or per year would you say? Adi Bathla (02:18) Average revenue per account looks something like $12K per year. what we also offer, the platform is revenue generating, liability protecting platform. And one of the aha moments within the first five minutes of the customer seeing the demo is the fact that the payback period is for a monthly fee within two repairs, the product pays for itself, basically. So the customers all in all generate 10 times the revenue than they pay us. Nathan Latka (02:49) So just let's say I'm in Austin, Texas, I drive a Tesla. Let's say that the screen is like stuck on black. It's a simple example, right? I can't figure out how make the screen work again, which means I can't shift to park or neutral, whatever. I take it to the local Austin repair shop here. What you're saying is three years ago, they'd have no idea what to do. But now if they use your software, they could connect some cords to the car and instantly know the software they need to fix. And they can charge me more for that and make up the $12,000 fee that they pay you for the year. Adi Bathla (03:15) Yeah, that's a great question. know, simplistic use case I'll walk you through. So let's say you take your car for repair, the check engine light is on or your... spot wasn't working or even the bumper needs to be repaired. So the car comes into the bay and Rev is already integrated with every piece of software and hardware that the shop uses. And so as soon as the car comes into the bay, Rev runs in the background and essentially within seconds does a research around what needs to be done to the car and puts the result of that research in the technicians' fingertips. So now the technician has the technician has the components that are equipped in the car, why they need to be repaired, what are the step-by-step instructions directly from the manufacturer's requirements around how to repair it, and the perfect claims packet that they can put together, send to the insurance companies, and get reimbursed by it. And if there's a third party, and oftentimes we did the study and more than 90 % of the shops now need to collaborate with specialists and a third party to do these repairs, so you're able to collaborate with that third party and collectively put together that proof of repair and while the owner of the shop is able to look at the P &L of what is my revenue leaky bucket ⁓ and the bookkeeper is able to do the books so it's purpose-built for shops of all sizes all types of users in a shop ultimately it lets the shop puts the safest car back on the road which prevents accidents which is the fourth largest cause of death in the country Nathan Latka (04:48) You launched this in 2022 and I'm studying your history trying to see if you worked at a repair shop or something to understand where you got the idea. I don't see it. So clue me in here. Tell us your background here and when did you get the idea? Adi Bathla (04:59) Yeah, I would, I'll highlight two key points in my career. I'd say, you know, I was a teenager when I really started building. I built a concept of a space colony for NASA. That, you know, did two things to me. It planted the entrepreneurial bug by ⁓ telling me that I could envision the future 100 years from now and really build a solution towards a pain point that that world would be solving for. And second, I didn't need to ask for permission to build something meaningful and create value in society. So that was really kind of the genesis of my entrepreneurial journey. And when I put myself in uncomfortable situations and threw myself in high growth startups working closely with founder CEOs who built multi-billion dollar businesses in record time. That really showed me how to build mission driven businesses. What does it really take to build that scale of a business? And when you surround yourself with people who are doing big things, doing small things becomes very uncomfortable. So I was willing to do anything and everything it takes to solve a meaningful problem in the world. And I started with the auto industry without knowing the exact pain point that I'm going to be solving for but I picked the industry. Nathan Latka (06:19) Where is that? Like I don't see any exposure to auto on your background here. Where did you first get exposed to these shops? Adi Bathla (06:26) That's my extended family in Houston, Texas, where they essentially own an auto parts distribution business. So I saw firsthand through them how pen and paper the industry was. That inner look into the industry really started in 2018, but in 2022 is when I reached a breaking point and threw myself in the abyss, quit my job, left my bonus, didn't know where the paycheck was coming from, and I started sleeping in their shops to really find out the pain point I would solve for. Nathan Latka (06:55) Give me a sense of how much you gave up. Are you comfortable sharing the salary and bonuses you gave up to go all in on Rev? Adi Bathla (07:01) I'd say I was still, you know, at that point living paycheck to paycheck. that paycheck was the source of my rent really. And the bonus that I gave up was around 20, 30K ⁓ plus no salary for a very long period of time. Plus, you know, me and my co-founder, didn't really pay ourselves really for the first year and second year. We were barely paying ourselves about 60K. ⁓ city so it it was was navigating all that stuff but you know looking back ⁓ wouldn't change a thing about it. Nathan Latka (07:40) Tell us how you got your first customer, 2022. Adi Bathla (07:44) I got my first customer so I had Nathan Latka (07:47) It has to be your family, by the way. Hopefully your family in Houston was the first customer. Adi Bathla (07:51) My family in Houston was not the first customer because that's not the problem that I ended up solving for. So yeah, through the network, I did get to understand a much more grueling hair on fire problem, which I'm solving today. But back then it wasn't as evident. So I really had to dig deep into the industry to find that pain point. And I'd say how I got my first customer was when I... Nathan Latka (07:54) Yeah. Okay. Adi Bathla (08:18) there was one phone call that really changed the whole game for me. So back then when I was trying to solve for my family's pain point simultaneously I was hopping around shops physically knocking doors and giving everybody my phone number and asking people to call me if they had a pain point to solve for. So there's one phone call that changed the game, which where a friend of a repair shop owner calls me, says, I just repaired a car. The lane change on the car malfunctioned. The driver got into an accident and they were worried they were gonna get sued. That sparked a series of discovery items, me hopping shop to shop, realizing that everybody has this pain point. It used to be one in four cars, but now it's three in four cars. So there's a massive why now and NetNew attached to it. That's when I really felt the pull from the industry. So I put together something, a concept, a proof of concept, and I started, built an album engine, and I started reaching out to shops across the country. There was one shop, I remember, that hopped on the call with me. Nathan Latka (09:18) Adi, what specifically though, you're breezing over some of this without giving the juicy details. So where were you door knocking? Was it New York City auto shops in the Bronx? Adi Bathla (09:23) now. I was door knocking in auto shops in Houston, Texas. I'm still in Houston, door knocking...