Making Market Ready –Why Startup should focus. B.Gopalakrishnan

In November of 2019, I received a call to attend an immersion session with Deshpande Startups. I was fortunate enough to meet Dr Desh Deshpande, the iconic leader who created the most extensive ecosystem for nurturing entrepreneurs. The goal of Deshpande Startups in Hubballi is to make the best ecosystem for Bharath startups to serve the bottom of the pyramid of 5 billion people in the world and the associated businesses. I’ve been part of this mission for the last 19 months, and my learning is an experience of a lifetime. In my previous tenure, I was part of the founding team of a large corporation and scaled the company from 0 to 440 crores, both in national and international markets. After meeting Dr Deshpande, I got inspired to contribute my skills and experience to build this ecosystem, so in December 2019, I relocated to Hubballi to work for Deshpande Startups. Throughout my time here, I have seen startups at various stages in their journeys, and I have been guiding and supporting these budding companies during the validation to scale-up phases, which is my strength. The first Scale-Up cohort, which our team designed and implemented, is coming to an end, and many successful case studies are emerging.

The Scale-Up program is a structured, deep-rooted mentorship program. Unlike other programs, we have created a unique value proposition of making our startups market-ready rather than merely investment-ready. To this end, for the first three months, we engage in customer discovery and understanding the needs of the startups. Then, we diagnose the critical business challenges that founders might be facing, suggest and implement “Do it with me” solutions to these roadblocks and integrate the successful solutions into the businesses. This kind of intervention led to tangible results, like identifying the sales leadership, identifying the right market for the products, increasing generated leads, increasing revenue, reducing sales cycle time, setting up sales processes, and GTM, SOPs, and KPIs at an accelerated pace. After the cohort ends, the startups are ready to scale up independently.

After a thorough customer discovery and understanding process, we have incorporated the inputs of several national and international accelerators into our Program Delivery model. Our founder, Dr Desh Deshpande, kicked off this Scale Up program with an inspiring talk. He then stressed the importance of the founders being able to identify and sell to the first 100 customers themselves as most of the founders are technocrats who focus more on the products rather than sales. As a result, six Startups got shortlisted through the application process. We then started preparing our first cohort of founders to validate the scale pathway, with a clear objective of making their companies market-ready and equipped with funding readiness. Raising funds is essential, but without funding readiness, startups may not attract these funds in the first place.

Peter Ducker once said that the ‘purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer’ - many times, startups struggle greatly to develop customers and then sustain these relationships. Therefore, founders must develop the abilities to solve, sell, organize, and last but not least, be resourceful when the need arises. In light of this, one of the core strengths of the Scale Up program is business and domain mentoring; through intensive engagement, industry experts help the startups attain sustained growth, create a more significant impact, and achieve scale.

The monthly startup assessment and self-reflection are crucial for understanding the field strategies and working versus what isn’t. Also, we can understand the founder’s needs better and structure our program delivery based on that information. For example, sales and marketing metrics are important for scaling. Our founders have been testing, learning, and unlearning for a while now. The indicators are starting to prove that our methods can identify, reach and appeal to our startups’ ideal customers in repeatable ways. This indicator is to demonstrate that our startups are on their way to finding the all-important product-market fit. Traction and data from early adopters tell us that we have achieved a problem-solution fit and are on our way to establishing product-market fit.

Last year, when we started the Scale Up program, the first wave of Covid-19 struck and adversely impacted many of our startups and founders. To adapt, we started working with the startups to engage with customers digitally and create a sales funnel. Some of our founders were involved in many digital marketing webinars and generated leads even during the pandemic. This support helped them positively impact their sales run rates, which serve as heartbeats for companies and are crucial indicators of future success to measure. The key differentiating factors of a successful company is its ability to identify its target customers, understand the BBC (Book, Bill, Collection) metrics, and consistently reach monthly targets to keep its flywheel rotation. What makes our Scale Up program stand out is bringing the BBC mindset to our founders. “Do It With Me” instead of “Do It?Yourself” allows our startup founder to work with mentors to co-create specific sales and GTM approaches, implement them in the field, take feedback, and improve to get faster sales closures. This approach is crucial since many of our startups need market access support to reach their ideal customers.

We selected six startups for the Scale Up program, and 5 of them are graduating with their milestone achievement. The profile of the selected startups are in early revenue and the?outcome of the program should facilitate Minimum Viable Product to Product Market fit. The composition of startups are 50% from agritech 16 % IOT tech, 16 % Rural tech , 16 % health tech.

On 14th July 2021 graduation ceremony was hosted?and 5 startups graduated from the program. Krishitantra, Nautilus, Public next, Wide mobility, Linkez were the 5 startups who came forward and shared their?reflections on the journey of the founder during the program.

There were certain highs and lows of the journey which the startup founders shared during their reflections. Few of them as listed below -

1. Linkez - Mr. Divyesh, who is CEO of Linkez highlighted that In Spite of Covid pandemic, through the Scaleup program they were able to make the product digitally enabled and able to secure a huge order. It helped Manufacturers realize their Full Potential using IOT based digital transformation of the manufacturing process. He was thankful that Deshpande startup has been able to connect the best of the mentors and their guidance has been immensely helpful .
2. Wide Mobility - Mr. Shekar, CEO of Wide Mobility informed the audience that getting a second product order from the same customer has been real testimony for their one of the Xray based inspection machines. Now ?they ?have a strong order book for the current year and the product has really evolved over this year. They are also able to complete the testing requirements. They shared the gratitude as Deshpande startups has been a pillar of support in providing timely guidance through business guidance and testing support?which made them think the same technology can be deployed for other fruits .
3. Krishi Tantra - Mr. Sandeep, CEO of Krishitantra, reflected on his journey of?Deshpande startup’s ?Scale up program. He mentioned it has been a very important milestone and thanked the market access and mentoring. A soil testing platform created an impact on farmers,?environment and livelihood. Currently they have 200 + installations, presence over 12 states and tested more than 32k soil testing.
4. Nautilus - It uses mobile technology to provide a cost effective and portable platform for ear testing. While talking on the occasion, Mr. Uday who is the CEO of the firm highlighted that he is able to achieve product market fit during the course of the scale up program and thanked Deshpande startup for the immense support provided on business mentoring and market access.
5. Public Next - A neighborhood social networking platform; Mr. Manjunath, CEO thanked Deshpande startup for connecting the domain mentor and recommended that the founder should select the mission aligned mentors for their journey and due to which they are able to reduce their cost of acquisition. He also insisted that a local syndicate of VC can be created so that more investment will get approached for the startups .

The startup’s journey throughout the program was totally motivational and inspired a lot of the audience from the growth they have had especially during these tough times. Our philosophy throughout the program has been to build businesses with high revenue growth, thereby a path to sustainability.?To do this, Scale-Up dives into critical business areas supported by domain experts, feedback on growth strategy, sales plans, and marketing finance and legality from scaling experts. After that, guidance on business plans and financial models given, concluding with market access -- thereby, the startup is market-ready and ready to scale up!

I thoroughly enjoyed working along with the founders, co-founders ,beloved mentors and market access Partners in our Scale Up program, who displayed a tremendous amount of passion and a never-die attitude towards their startups. It is my privilege to outline my experiences through this blog.