Sramana Mitra: What you have today is a product and a business model that is just starting to come into the market? This business model is not generating $5 million in revenue? Benoît l’Archevêque: If you only consider Azzimov, no. But if you consider the whole entity, yes. Sramana Mitra: You’re basically trying to turn
Sramana: Who were you going after in terms of clientele? Gaurav Khandelwal: In the beginning, I was going after companies that had an appetite for innovation. Primarily, they were small and medium businesses. I often ran into entrepreneurs who were looking to build their ideas into the next big thing. This was happening in 2008
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. John spent $200,000 to get to his first million in 18 months with GoGrid. One year from that, the company got to $5 million. Today, they are at over $50 million in revenue run-rate, all organically grown. Read John’s insights on a tightly managed entrepreneurial journey.
Benoît l’Archevêque: It’s like the 411 service in North America where people call to get services. In China, they have salesmen receiving the call. People call and say, “I’m looking for this.” The person receiving the call will not only give the information but also go and complete the sale. Azzimov is included in that. They
Sramana: What specifically did you do when you launched ChaiOne? Who was your first customer? Gaurav Khandelwal: I was dating a girl at the time who is now my wife. She was working at Microsoft and called me on a Friday night frantic. Her boss needed something done by Monday morning and it was something
Sramana Mitra: In the case of Google, they have web self-service advertisement capabilities like Google CPC. If I, as a small business, want to advertise on Google, I can go to Google’s website and set it up to do that advertising. Do you have that in place as well? Benoît l’Archevêque: Yes. We call that
Sramana: Paying off all of your college debt is not a bad exit from your first company! Gaurav Khandelwal: I agree that it was very timely. It also gave me a taste for entrepreneurship. After I graduated, I went to work for a consulting firm in New York. I quickly found out that I could
Benoît l’Archevêque: There are three revenue models in Azzimov: advertising when you search, the lead generation system that I just explained, and the affiliate model. When someone buys, there’s a percentage take off that. Put that aside. Take that business model, but apply it to mobile.