Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga (Part 5)

Sramana: What are some of your other online marketing strategies?

Siva Sanmuga: We still do a lot of our marketing through Google. Keyword marketing is something that is very proven for our business. We are now doing content marketing as well, which involves banner ads. We have done some marketing on social media but we did not see good results there. We are now looking into public relation campaigns, and we are starting to focus on that now.

Sramana: When you look at your competitive landscape in the virtual PBX business, how do the market shares split up?

Siva Sanmuga: When you look just at the toll-free market alone, 80% of that market is still residing on old technology held by the big vendors such as Verizon and AT&T. Companies like Ring Central, Grasshopper and us hold less than 10% of that market. Even though we are competing with each other, the total market share that is held by us newer companies remains very small.

Sramana: What is your forecast for the future of this market?

Siva Sanmuga: The virtual PBX marketplace is well known in the high-tech market, but for whatever reason it remains a virtual unknown in the rest of the marketplace. We have not crossed the threshold where mainstream business knows what a virtual PBX is and the benefits they can gain by using it. One of the things that did not work out was telemarketing. We put in a lot of effort into telemarketing. We found it was almost impossible to educate clients about the technology and the benefits over the phone.

Mamoon Rashid: I think the future of the virtual PBX space is very different. It is a platform on which a lot of things can be developed on. I think it is the applications that are built on these platforms that will ultimately dictate how the technology moves forward. We have filed and received a patent for voice memos. It is a memo-taking application that works with your virtual PBX. These are the types of services that are going to help early adopters and people on the go. These tools will help multi-taskers keep track and log their work via their phone service.

Sramana: I am not sure I agree with that. You will likely see adaptation of those applications in your core early adopter user base initially, but the question is, how do you cross the chasm? I think the question Siva raised is the right question, which is how to move out of the high-tech market into the mainstream marketplaces. Do you think RingCentral or Grasshopper has moved towards the mainstream?

Siva Sanmuga: We are bootstrapped but the others are funded. They are advertising and getting on radio. They are helping to break out towards the mainstream markets.

Sramana: What is your strategy to counter that? One strategy would be to let them educate the market and then enter after them and compete entirely on price point. Another strategy would be to get funded and play the same game.

Siva Sanmuga: With our company’s culture we are going to focus on the low-price model and let them educate the marketplace. We are also now focusing on patents and adding features that we will be able to protect that we can later use to differentiate ourselves.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga
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