Joseph Olassa

🌿✨ Embracing AYUSH: Empowering Health Naturally! 🌟 Did you know? Recent data from the survey on AYUSH conducted by National Sample Survey Office, India reveals that 50% of Indians used AYUSH healthcare system in the last year! 🔹 AYUSH system of medicines refers to the use of one or more of the system(s) of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy 🔹 95% of rural and 96% of urban folks are aware of AYUSH traditions. 🔹 85% of rural and 86% of urban households practice Medicinal Plants/Home Remedies/Local Health Traditions. 🔹 Nearly half of rural (46%) and over half of urban (53%) individuals used AYUSH in the last year for health benefits. We at SaveIN work with several leading alternate medicine providers like Dr Batra’s Healthcare Jiva Ayurveda Madhavbaug Homeocare International among others, and are witnessing tremendous demand for alternate therapies, especially for chronic diseases and lifestyle disorders. Let's continue to explore the power of traditional wisdom in promoting holistic wellness alongside adopting the latest in healthcare! 🌱💪 #AYUSH #HolisticHealth #WellnessJourney #TraditionalMedicine #Healthcare #Lifestyle

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The process of getting deeper into the Indian start-up ecosystem as an angel investor and limited partner (2 new hats of mine since 2023) is well on its way. Today spent the day attending Ivycap day 2024 as a special attendee. getting to understand the dynamics of investing, assessing business models and plans, valuation and most importantly founders. should have started a bit earlier but then no regrets. these new hats are part of a larger connecting the dots am attempting.

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Shashank Bijapur co-founder and CEO of SpotDraft, our portfolio company, ran a terrific panel at the Arkam Innovation Summit. He covered a lot of ground with Manish Jethani Co-founder and CEO of Hevo Data Data, and Gaurav Sharma Founder, and CEO of SaaSLabs .    Here are some key takeaways that stayed with me: Initial journey of identifying the problem statement and figuring out the solution during the early days at SaaS Labs and Hevo Data After selling his first company in the US, Gaurav returned to India. All he wanted to do was make $4-5 K living in India, so he started out by building tools for Shopify users. But when those tools rapidly grew to half a million in recurring revenue, Gaurav realized that he could build anything, be anywhere in the world, and sell it worldwide. Manish believes that your product has to solve a personal problem in addition to an industrial one. Once you start the journey as an entrepreneur, financial success will not satisfy you. “What one problem can you solve even if the financial outcome is not that great?” Deciding whether to validate the product in India and move to the US versus taking a US market-first approach Selling in India is hard, especially in the early days. As Gaurav said, "if you sell a $10 product, you must create an invoice, and then they’ll make the payment in 60 days. So, it became very hard to make a profit. From this, I realized that India is not ready to buy software yet, so the best model would be to build it in India and sell it across the world" Manish believes customer needs and expectations are completely different across India and the US. It's quite challenging to build a product for India and expect it to succeed in the US. So, from day one, he focused on the US market-first approach. Establishing product differentiation during the early days of growing in the US market? Initially, the number one challenge for Manish was to sell a product that their target audience could build themselves. Hevo Data needed needed financial and operational data from companies, which nobody shares easily. Most companies prefer to build a product in-house and work with that tool. So, Manish decided to find initial customers who meet three criteria: they should not want to build a product in-house, they should be fine with sharing the data, and they should be from the US. Aspects of the business that changed from 0-1 to 1-10 journey and beyond To get initial customers, Gaurav decided to integrate his product into larger companies to get more eyes on it. To sustain this growth, Gaurav bet on excellent customer service, which is “an unfair advantage for Indian SaaS,” as he says. His customer service and fast responses became the talk of the town amongst his customers. Here’s the full video video. Well worth your time to listen to three $10M ARR SaaS founders at the top of their game.   Arkam Ventures https://lnkd.in/gP_YT-gV

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In the next three to five years, India has the potential to become a $50 billion AI market. Realizing this potential will require us to nurture talent, build relevant solutions, and democratize technology for non-English-speaking communities. Hanooman, supported in 12 Indian languages and based on a foundational model, is poised to play a crucial role in the coming years. Keeping the core technology and source code within the country, we can develop solutions that are uniquely adaptable to India’s diverse needs. Vishnu Vardhan 3AI Holding SML https://lnkd.in/dJYsPhF5 #Hanooman #3AIHolding #GenerativeAI #ResponsibleAI #TechForGood #AIForAll #AIInnovation

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Continuing on the question of what themes have driven India SaaS over the last decade: one of the themes has been the me-too model in SaaS - this has been a majority of early-stage financings historically in India. I think starting a new company today with this model may be tough, given rise in keyword costs and intense competitive clutter. The model has assumed: - target a large, mature market - build 60-80% of functionality (or pick off a part of the workflow) with some technical innovation - offer at a fraction of the price of the market leader - target SMB first, then work your way up to lower mid-market - aggressive GTM through SEO, SEM, self-service and remote sales - differentiate through price and support - category leadership is not the goal - 10 years to $100mm ARR (if successful)- which is ok-ok growth rate, not top quartile

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As someone who is privileged to be closely involved in the journey of several startups including Mygate, the ability to write such a blog, let alone publish it to the public shows an extraordinary longterm thinking and maturity for founders. First of all, kudos to the team on stellar execution and is the input to this blog. Secondly kudos on the courage to publish such information, for a second time now. Last but not least, I encourage all founders to write such a blog and a similar plan for the year ahead. Publishing this can be at your own discretion - private, management team, board, investors, public. Use your best judgement but write you must! It’s a great discipline to have - ideally once a quarter! Yes the first two times will be difficult, but it will soon become a “liberating” habit.

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