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Startup Mantra: Implement digital workflows for smooth run
Birdvision Consulting assists businesses in enhancing process result through automation and digitisation
The Covid-19 pandemic brought about many challenges for businesses around the world, and Bangladesh-based bottlers of a global soft-drink producer were no exception. Their field sales teams, who would usually visit retailers for order bookings, were unable to do so due to restrictions and lockdown. This led to a significant decrease in sales, as retailers were unable to restock their supplies. In response, the bottlers set up a new ordering channel for retailers that was quick, convenient, and available 24x7. The solution that was implemented was a multichannel chatbot that retailers could access on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Viber. This chatbot allowed retailers to view products, check offers, seek support, and place orders, all from the comfort of their own homes or businesses. Pune-based startup Birdvision Consulting, founded by Kapil Rana and Mahaveer Muttha, made this happen. The chatbot made it so easy for salespeople and retailers that they did not need to meet in person. In addition to the chatbot, the bottlers in Bangladesh were also provided integration with the distribution management system (DMS) for the distributors. This integration allowed distributors to view all orders in a single interface, making the ordering and fulfilment process more streamlined and efficient. The impact of these changes was significant. Repeat orders increased by 14 per cent, new orders were up by 12 per cent and customer engagement increased by 20 per cent.
In the beginning…
Rana is a mechanical engineer and an MBA from a tier-1 institute with over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience in loyalty and rewards and digital transformation space. Muttha has over 12+ years of industry experience and is an expert in technology commercialisation and leads the Pune chapter of a tech community Google Developers Group.
Says Muttha, “We both met through a group conversation on Whatsapp. I was running a startup which then was acquired by another company. After my exit, I joined Rana in 2017. Birdvision was earlier into rewards and loyalty points, however, the trend changed and corporates started looking for offering instant gratification to their customers. So, we pivoted our model and focussed majorly on a business-to-business (B2B) model.”
Learnings
The duo envisioned their new venture as a digital transformation and workflow automation company. The duo says Birdvision is driving digital transformation and delivering more value for businesses across industries by using workflow automation to improve process efficiency.
Muttha said, “Whether it is about new customer onboarding, pre-purchase, purchase, or post-purchase, the B2B user journeys usually turn out to be longer, more complex, or overstretched at every stage. We were aiming to enhance the customer experience throughout the B2B customer journey. That is when we realised that businesses worldwide are moving from web and mobile app-first to WhatsApp-first applications. WhatsApp ticks all the boxes to deliver a great experience and get your B2B marketing strategy right.”
Adding further Rana says, “Whatsapp is a familiar interface with great user-friendly features leading to high adoption rates. It has high deliverability and engagement rates than any traditional communication channels. If anyone wants to enthral their customers with rich messages containing images, videos, documents, interactive buttons, emojis, etc, along with end-to-end secure messaging, personalised options and multi-lingual capabilities, real-time communication with instant responses then Whatsapp is the right fit, especially if the speed of response is a make-or-break factor. With WhatsApp Web, users can connect using their desktops and laptops too.”
Inclusivity and risk
The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, especially the first six months, were a period of distress for the duo. Muttha recalls his conversation with Rana about whether the company would survive the lockdown. But times changed and Birdvision started growing 2x in early 2021.
Muttha said, “Our B2B platform is created in a modular way and it can accommodate multiple digital workflows under every module. It is a low code platform, with more and more digital workflows and modules being added to the base platform, our product will appeal to a wider base and time to market will also be less. The platform is more inclusive for distribution partners as it is built in a way so that users can connect and transact on social apps like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger etc. They do not need to download an app or visit a website.”
“What seems to be an advantage is also the biggest risk to our business, the reliance on Whatsapp as the dominant channel of communication and transaction. We are in the process to add other social apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, Viber etc to the platform,” he added.
Product-Market Fit
Muttha says, “We believe that innovations are happening all across the world and learnt that the market evolves fast at this time hence we try to build, sell, and earn from the things which we build rather than investing time and money in getting processes patented, and on another side our offerings are SAAS base, where we keep evolving different modules and plugins in our offerings to our new and old customers which protect our brand and innovation and our customer stays with us for long.”
Elaborating further, Rana said, “Our product stands different as it can be fully or partially customised according to brand and customers’ requirements. A lot of modules are available which can be made available to use with minimal configurations. To maintain a competitive edge in the market, we keep adding new features and functionalities in the product, keep training our model with different NLP and ML algorithms, and keep adding different language support which makes use of our product easy.”
Emphasising the importance of data protection and security, Rana said, “We ensure that we follow and implement all data protection, security and privacy policies which are mandatory with respect to any brand and country.”
Team building
Speaking of team building, the duo stated that attracting talent was their biggest challenge in this journey. “We recruit a limited number of people but we make sure that we hire the right people. And the meaning of right for us to have a good intent towards their work, career, organisational as well as personal growth,” said Rana.
On the company culture, Muttha says, “We encourage open communication and collaboration within the teams and team members which helps create a positive and supportive work environment. We provide professional and personal growth opportunities which help employees feel valued and invested in the company’s growth and development. We ensure that we hire diverse people to maintain the diversity in the team which helps get different aspects.”
Customer acquisition
“Birdvision has started a pilot with Coca-Cola in Nepal and Bangladesh that has been scaled up to 3 lakh outlets and we are in the process to sign a Master service agreement with Coca-Cola Atlanta. This agreement will make us visible to all their bottling partners globally,” Muttha claims.
Adding further he stated, “We have a digital and inside sales team for lead generation. Apart from this, we have strategic partnerships with leading digital agencies for access to their clients. We largely have focussed on the FMCG space and our product roadmap also reflects that. We plan to add digital workflows for automobiles and FMCD soon.”
Rana said, “Currently, we work with large enterprises (above ₹1,000 crore) who have large distribution networks. Currently, most of our new clients are due to inbound referral leads from our existing clients. We plan to reach clients with revenues between ₹100 crore to ₹1,000 crore with our SaaS offering soon. We are focused on a success metric for client implementations and our client success managers monitor metrics through very detailed dashboards and intervene in case of any deviations.”
“We currently use cold emails and digital marketing to generate leads. We also are tying up with strategic partners (technology and marketing) who offer complementary solutions. The current churn rate is high mostly due to unsuccessful pilots, but we are standardising the execution and success metric to improve pilots to scale up ratio,” Kapil stated.
Next big thing
The duo intends to look forward to making a ₹100 crore company in the next 3-5 years and further doubling it every year.
Rana said, “We are sustainable and have cash reserved for the next six months. However, we are planning to raise for expansion of the business. We raised around ₹2.75 crore so far. We will go for a strategic sale or an IPO in future.”
Speaking of competitors, Mahaveer stated, “Our competitors include chatbot makers and traditional IT services companies. Whereas chatbot makers are focused on use cases that need AI, IT service companies are focused on client-specific custom developments. We are focused on helping companies develop, deploy, and maintain digital infra and data pipeline for their distribution partners where the tech adoption has been slow.”
