How UpCred Raised $400K Pre-Seed and Ran $37K of Campaign Volume for 10 Brands (Interview with CEO Dharmpal Chaudhary)

Intro and Founder500 Announcement

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey guys, recording this here on what is it? Friday the nineteenth. Maybe you're seeing this on Monday at the latest, but wanna let you know we are almost sold out for Foundercomp Sorry, Founder500 in Austin, Texas here in about a week. It's gonna be an amazing event. 500 B2B SaaS founders. I'm looking at the attendee list. There's almost 60 founders with more than $67,000,000 in ARR. It's an incredible group of group. There's over one and fifty

00:27with more than 1,000,000, more than a million revenue. It's an incredible group. You don't wanna miss it. Grab your hotel, grab your flight, grab a ticket right now. I'll put the link in the bio in the description here on YouTube. And I think there's only about three tickets left. Okay, about three tickets left. I'd love to see you guys there. Don't be bashful. Grab your ticket now. Hey, folks. My guest today is Dharmpal Chaudhary. He started

Guest Introduction: Dharmpal Chaudhary and UpCred

Nathan Latka

00:48his career as a software engineer with a company called Travelyaari, then worked with Air Asia, Yellow.ai, and Plivo. He started his first company Step Out in football analytics domain and currently work is working as the co founder and CEO at upcred, which is building tech to solve the problems related to influencer marketing. Dharmpal, you ready to take us to the top?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

01:09>> Yes. Yes.

01:10>> I'm ready.

Nathan Latka

01:11Okay. So how do you help influencers market?

How UpCred Connects Influencers with Brands

Dharmpal Chaudhary

01:14>> Okay. So actually, firstly, like, are influencers out there which are not so popular, but their content is performing really well. So we are searching for those sort of influencer and then for the relevant kind of campaigns which are coming out from brand. We are connecting them with the brands.

Nathan Latka

01:31Okay. So who's paying you? The brand or the influencer? How do you make money?

Business Model: Commission from Brands

Dharmpal Chaudhary

01:35>> Actually, most of the times we are making money from a brand site. We are taking a straightforward commission from their end.

Nathan Latka

01:42Okay. So there's no SaaS fee. It's only commission?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

01:46>> That's a service charge we call it. It's a straightforward service charge which we are taking from brand site for every collaboration which we which they do with influencer.

Nathan Latka

01:56Okay. So what is the average brand pay you per month in terms of the straight fee?

Pricing Structure: Up to 10% of Campaign Cost

Dharmpal Chaudhary

02:02>> Coming to straight fee, that is 10% of the total campaign cost, whichever will come up after summing up all the cost for different different influencer, which we will be selecting for a campaign.

Nathan Latka

02:14Okay. So I'm a brand, you know, let's just call it, I'm Pepsi, a Pepsi brand, a Coke brand, right? And I want to find influencers. So Pepsi is going come to you and say, I want to spend a million dollars this month. Right? And when do you get 10% of a million?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

02:29>> That again depends like if you are trying to or you are ready to spend million dollar probably rather than asking you 10% of the total campaign cost, I will probably ask you for a fixed commission on top of the whole campaign. Okay.

Nathan Latka

02:45Okay. I'm not following you. The pricing model here seems a bit confusing. So I'm trying to ask questions to simplify it. If I wanna spend a million dollars through your platform today and you're gonna help Pepsi go find a 100 influencers to spend a million dollars on, how do you make money?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

03:00>> So most of the times, like, whenever we are doing an influencer marketing campaign, we are trying to charge brands, which is something which which is actually justifying. Okay. So every time we cannot charge for 10% commission because for every campaign, the kind of effort which we are putting as a company will be different. So we will be first so like maximum it will be 10%. That's it. It can be somewhere between

Nathan Latka

03:29How many Dharmpal, how many brands paid you something last month?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

03:34>> Last month, more than 10 brands which paid us because we recently started and we are also we are also focusing on the tech side of it. There are a lot of problems there in this market and we are trying to solve it. I can briefly talk about those problems.

Nathan Latka

03:49Well, so are you are you are you pre revenue today or have you made money already?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

03:54>> We are already making money. We are making revenue.

Nathan Latka

03:58Okay. When and when did you launch the company? What year?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

04:01>> So the company was launched in September 2021.

Nathan Latka

04:05Okay. 2021. And have you guys bootstrapped today or raised capital?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

04:09>> Okay. So initially we bootstrapped, but like this year, like initially itself, we like raised our pre seed round.

Nathan Latka

04:19How much did you decide to raise?

Pre-Seed Raise of $400K

Dharmpal Chaudhary

04:21>> So we raised like 400 k plus. Okay.

Nathan Latka

04:25And why did you need that money to build this? Was just the engineering too expensive or what?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

04:30>> The engineering is expensive, but at the same time, we wanted to bring something really good. So and that too, we wanted to launch very quickly. So for that, we needed that money.

Nathan Latka

04:42So who is we? How many are on the team today full time?

Team Size: 15+ Full-Time Employees

Dharmpal Chaudhary

04:46>> So the team is more than, like, 15 people. We are having more than 15 people as a full timer. And then there are a lot of other consultants and part timers who are working with us for different different things. Like, you talk about marketing strategy and content script strategy, we are having people who are working as a part timer.

Nathan Latka

05:06Oh, 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

05:29your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it 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

05:53get a 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

06:15not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders 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

06:41going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if

07:03you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the

Equity Split Among Three Co-Founders

Nathan Latka

07:29interview. And how many founders do you have, Dharmpal?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

07:33>> Can you come again?

Nathan Latka

07:35How many founders? Are you the sole founder?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

07:37>> Okay. So we we have total three founders at this point of time.

Nathan Latka

07:43Okay. And how did you, know, splitting equity at the beginning is always really tough. How did you guys decide to split equity at the beginning?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

07:50>> So initially, we we thought of going with a base equity that, hey, we'll be giving you this this percentage initially. And going ahead, whoever is whoever is going up and above the mark, we can allocate more equity to them. That was the discussion initially.

Nathan Latka

08:08Okay. Well, that didn't answer my question. So what what did you end up doing? How much did you split it equally or did you do something different?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

08:14>> Okay. So first of all, like, 50 50 doesn't work out. Because what happens if you see, right, down the line after one year, most of the times, one cofounder will actually be leading a lot. Probably he will be having a thought process or maybe understanding of the the same market two weeks better than the other co founder. So he should be benefited. Right? Or he should be rewarded for that. So just for inserting that, we initially divided

08:41>> the equity in a way that, hey, let's let's have these these percentage as a base equity. And after that, whoever is creating more value, they can be given more equity.

Nathan Latka

08:53Got it. But are there two of you or three? You said split fifty fifty but you started by saying there's three co founders. So what is it?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

08:58>> I said fifty fifty which means thirty thirty or thirty three, 33%.

Nathan Latka

09:05Got it. So everyone got like 20% equally.

09:07So 60% and you said at the end of a year, whoever's working the hardest will give more equity to?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

09:13>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

09:14See. Okay. And you did the pre seed raise, most folks are selling, you know, doing pre seed raises. They're selling, you know, 15 to 20% of their companies. Is that sort of what you guys did?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

09:24>> No, that we have taken another way actually. We have diluted not more than 15% actually.

Nathan Latka

09:31Oh, wow. So you sold 15. Okay. So that's good. So you raised it like a 2,000,000 pre money valuation, something like that.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

09:40>> Actually more than that, I would say.

Nathan Latka

09:42Okay, well, you sold 15%, 400 into 2,000,000 would be 15%.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

09:47>> Less than 15%.

09:49>> Less.

Nathan Latka

09:50Okay, got it. So higher

09:53than a 2,000,000 valuation?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

09:54>> Yes.

Customer Count and Revenue Discussion

Nathan Latka

09:55Okay. Let's go back to the tool because that's where we started and I was confused, but now we know more about the business. So going back to the tool, again, have 10 customers paying you today. On average, what a customer like, what did you make per customer last month?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

10:10>> So it it actually depends. If you talk about customer, there are customers who are paying us 50 lakhs for a campaign. There are customers who are paying less than that. Like the ticket size that start from 50 k to 50 lakhs. And here, like, if you talk about what we are able to make in 50 k ticket size, we are able to make 5 k out of it. And then if you talk about the bigger ticket size

10:33>> there, sometimes we are not charging 10% straight away. We are charging some fixed amount of commission.

Nathan Latka

10:39Okay. Dharmpal, this is very confusing. How much total campaign volume in dollars, US Dollars, did you process last month?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

10:48>> So in US dollar, if I'll just I'll just have to convert it.

Nathan Latka

10:53From rupees or lakhs or what?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

10:57>> Yes. From rupees to dollar. So that will give me fair idea.

Nathan Latka

11:03Well, what is it in rupees? I can do the conversion.

Campaign Volume: $37K Over Six Months

Dharmpal Chaudhary

11:07>> So that will be somewhere close to 37 k dollar. That's what we did last month.

Nathan Latka

11:14Okay. So 10 brands spent $37,000 through your platform last month.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

11:19>> In last six months, actually.

Nathan Latka

11:22Okay. So 10 brands spent 37,000 United States dollars through your platform over the past six months. Is that accurate?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

11:29>> Yes. That is accurate.

Nathan Latka

11:30So how I mean, how do you go faster? Right? I mean, that's not a lot of ad spend, especially when you're taking a very small percent.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

11:39>> That is actually fine at this point of time because we wanted to gain a lot of like, not a lot of experience in this market. And after that, we can actually charge more. Now when started, right, so we thought of delivering lot of value to the customer. And after that, we can eventually start taking more margin for each and every campaign which we are executing.

Nathan Latka

12:00Understood.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

12:01>> How many understood.

Nathan Latka

12:02Understood. How many influencers made at least a dollar over the past six months?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

12:07>> So if you talk about how many influencers have worked with us for a paid campaign, so they are like close to 55 k influencers who have made at least I think I would say at least $100 with us.

Influencer Network: 55,000+ on Platform

Nathan Latka

12:22Okay. So there's 55,000 influencers that have made at least a $100 from you over the past six months?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

12:29>> No. More than six months, actually. This number. Close to eight eight, nine months. Okay. These people have. But,

Nathan Latka

12:37Dharmpal, my math something's wrong here. If I take 55,000 influencers and they all have made a $100 on your platform, that's 5,500,000. But you just told me your total volume over the past six months was 37,000.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

12:52>> I I there I said, like, 55,000. I think there is some confusion. I think not $100, less than that actually.

Nathan Latka

13:02Many influencers last month made at least a dollar from your platform?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

13:07>> At least a dollar you're talking, right?

Nathan Latka

13:09Last month, at least a dollar.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

13:11>> I'll I'll I'll just tell you, like, the number which I have now that 55 k influencers have worked with us under paid campaign. I just have to check into that number, that one number they have made, all of them.

Nathan Latka

13:24Well, for context, if you've if you have $37,000 in total paid campaigns over the past six months. Right? That's accurate. Right?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

13:32>> Yes. In the last six months, but if

Nathan Latka

13:34Divided by 55,000 influencers.

13:37Right? That's each influencer making 70¢ on average.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

13:43>> Actually, when I said, like, the number was not, like, last six months, specifically, I'm when I'm talking about the influencer side, that was the whole number.

Nathan Latka

13:53Okay. How many influencers the past six months?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

13:56>> That I need to check actually.

Nathan Latka

13:58Okay. But, Dharmpal, my question is still the same. If you understand my question, you have 55,000 influencers that have made at least a dollar, and you have 37,000 of total revenue through the platform. GMV ad spend. It's about $37,000 of total ad spend across 55,000 influencers. Each influencer is only making like 50¢. That's nothing.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

14:17>> Okay. I'll I'll tell you. So what happens like when I'm telling you, so there are 55 k influencers who have worked with us for any sort of campaign. That could be like barter also. Sometimes we are not making they are not making money. They are getting some But

Nathan Latka

14:33that was my question, Dharmpal. I said how many influencers made it to add some money on the platform? And you said 55,000. So that's why I'm

Dharmpal Chaudhary

14:39>> No, I just just have to check into that number, look into that number. Not very sure about it. But yeah, that I can give you that 55 k influencers have worked with us for any sort of campaign.

Nathan Latka

14:49Okay, got it. That wasn't my question. That's That's why you confused me. Okay. So that's why we were on different pages. The reason I asked this question is I know a lot of influencer marketing companies where it's a marketplace like this, that you can sign up influencers all day long, but if you don't help them make money, they're gonna leave. That's why I asked this question.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

15:06>> Actually, initially that happened to us also currently like as of now we are having 60 more than like 68 k influencers and we are also having another data set of 40 k. So total like somewhere close to one lakh plus influencer database we have then in.

Nathan Latka

15:27Yeah. I don't I don't care about the database. I care about influencers that are making a living on your platform.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

15:32>> So actually, we are a small team and this is what we have done so far. We'll be definitely scaling that up.

Nathan Latka

15:41Yeah. But Dharmpal. Why do you care? Why do you care about how many influencers total have signed up? If none of them are making any money on the platform, it doesn't matter how many signed up. They're not activated.

Key Metric: Influencers Making Money

Dharmpal Chaudhary

15:51>> That's very much true that if they're not making money, number of sign ups or number of influencers are not gonna be helping us. That's totally true.

Nathan Latka

16:02But so why don't you know that number? I mean, asked you the question, you said you don't know it. Isn't that the number one most important metric for you is how many influencers have made money on the platform, but you don't know the answer to that?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

16:12>> Actually, you said like so far. Right? So from last two months, I'm not having the track of it. I can probably send you that number.

Nathan Latka

16:23Okay. That's my question. Isn't that, like, isn't that the number one thing? Shouldn't you know don't you check that every morning?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

16:28>> I think I I should be knowing that.

Nathan Latka

16:30Okay.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

16:31>> I should be knowing that.

Nathan Latka

16:32I just Fair enough. Okay. Makes sense. Cool. Okay. So you're doing $37,000 last six months. You've raised some capital to scale. You're 15 full time. Look. We're rooting for you. You're in a very tough space, though, so we'll see what happens. In the meantime, though, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

16:50Favorite business book.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

16:51>> So that was Rich Dad and Poor Dad. I liked it. Number two. And that's I got a lot of motivation.

Nathan Latka

16:56Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:01>> So currently, there are many CEOs whom I am following at this point of time, but Elon Musk is the is everyone's favorite. So

Nathan Latka

17:09Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building upcred?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:13>> Favorite online tool?

17:17>> So there are multiple tools which I I've been using for building upcred.

Nathan Latka

17:22What's your favorite online tool? Pick one.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:25>> Google Docs, I would say.

Nathan Latka

17:27Google Docs.

17:28Number four. How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:30>> I think six hours.

Nathan Latka

17:34Six. Okay. Very good. And what's your situation, Dharmpal? Married? Married? Single? Kids?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:40>> No. I'm not married. I'm a single person. So

Nathan Latka

17:43Not married. No kids. How old are you?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:46>> Currently, like, 24.5.

Nathan Latka

17:4824.5. Very good. Last question. What's something you wish you knew four years ago when you were 20?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:55>> Can you come again?

Nathan Latka

17:56What's something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old?

Dharmpal Chaudhary

17:59>> There are a lot of things actually. I I should have started earlier. That's what I feel.

Nathan Latka

18:05Guys, start your company earlier. Upcred.ai launched about a year and a half ago. They've got 55,000 influencers signed up. They've helped 10 brands process $37,000 in ad volume through their platform. They're hoping to make money based off a commission on ad spend they process and also help influencers make a living on their platform. We'll see what happens. Three cofounders split the equity evenly at the start, 15 full time on the team, a $400,000 pre seed raise

Wrap-Up and Closing Remarks

Nathan Latka

18:29at around north of 2,500,000 valuation. We'll see what Dharmpal does next. Dharmpal, thanks for taking us to the top.

Dharmpal Chaudhary

18:35>> Thank you. Thank you so much.

Nathan Latka

18:39One 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

19:04Central. 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

19:27fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 up

19:48for 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 on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

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