House of Experts Ep 37: Vibha Kagzi in conversation with Anand Jain, Co-Founder, CleverTap

House of Experts is a show that ReachIvy kick-started to help those who are unclear about their career choices. We hope through these sessions with some very successful people, we can shed light on a new career path every week. House of Experts plans to make a collection of interactive and informative sessions with experts from various domains.

Vibha Kagzi, the host, is the Founder and CEO of ReachIvy.com, a premium study abroad and career consultancy organization. Vibha, a Harvard alumna, is a successful entrepreneur and believes in helping others chalk out their future careers.

In episode 37 of House of Experts, we were fortunate to host, Anand Jain, an entrepreneur and a product builder with over 25 years of experience working at Fortune 500 organizations as well as running his own startups across multiple geographies. His previous startup – burrp! was founded in 2006 and acquired in 2009 by one of India’s largest media conglomerates. In 2020, Anand was awarded the Business Leader of the Year award from ET Now.

CleverTap is the #1 user retention & engagement platform for digital-first businesses. In 2017, CleverTap was awarded the Top Startup award from TiE Silicon Valley.

Some excerpts from the interview:

1) Tell us about your childhood and some early influences.
I was born in Lucknow and grew up in Ahmedabad, where I spend 25 years of my life. After that, I went to the USA, worked there for a while, and came back to India. I’m currently settled in Mumbai. As a child, I was very curious and interested in tinkering with electrical items. I would open up watches, TV sets, refrigerators, and anything that had a screw at the back and could be opened. I wasn’t very good in academics. I have always been more of a hands-on person as opposed to someone who could read a book and understand something. My tryst with electronics goes way back. When I was in the 8th grade, I realized that I enjoyed opening up things and understanding how they work. Some of these things come naturally to me. As I was growing up, I started enjoying programming and software. I realized that you only need a machine, and nothing else, to code!

2) What were the learnings you took from Burrp, which you applied later to CleverTap?
The first learning was that you need to have a stellar team. It’s very important to have a strong team because you need to know how many people are willing to jump into the unknown with you and share the same vision as you. Your team matters more than everything else. Secondly, you need to have a very solid business model, because your business has to pay for itself. The third learning is to keep an eye on competition, but not be obsessed about it. Be aware of your competitors but don’t define yourself by them.

3) If someone wants to get into a technology business, how much of knowledge of technology and how much of a bend towards business do you think is required?
You need to understand the technology. You may not know how to write codes and that’s absolutely alright. What is uncompromisable is the understanding of the business. You have to know what business you’re in, and must dive extremely deep to know what the business is all about. Once you understand it, you can be in control of your business. Technology is the means to the business, not the other way round.

4) Share with us your experience about the process of fundraising?
Like with everything in life, investors also come in both flavours. We were lucky enough to find good investors. It’s not the size of the cheque they’re cutting or how fancy their brand is. You have to work at an individual level with the partner you’re going to end up with. We spent some time with our partners and knew that these were the people who would challenge and inspire us, and ask us to dream big. So, you have to be very careful. It’s important to do background checks and talk to existing investee companies to understand what you’re getting into. Just because someone is willing to cut you a cheque, it doesn’t mean you have to make them a part of your journey.

We are really thankful to Anand for sharing his experiences and valuable learnings with us.

Missed out on the previous house of expert episodes? You can watch them here

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