Former Citrix man, an angel investor and now a Co-founder, executive VP and GM sales at Lavelle Networks, experienced in networking, cloud, on-premise software, hardware, and SaaS – Vishal Khare – tells how emerging technology companies can establish kaizen sales strategies.
India is booming in Innovation with the Science and Technology sector growing at a rapid pace. Not just in technology, the evolution of start-up and new digital ecosystem, its growth drivers, the role played by investors, incubators/ accelerators, and the Government has boosted India’s morale to become the most attractive investment destinations for technology transactions in the world. And as India leaps forward in the technology sector and the global technology market, a pool of new tech-based start-ups is emerging with innovative and new age technology solutions. But very few make it to the top.
90% of Indian startups fail within their first 5 years of inception. Reportedly, the number of IT startups in the country slumped to 800 in the first nine months of 2017 from over 6,000 in all of 2016.
The 5 trillion dollar Echo
IT & ITeS industry grew to US$ 181 billion in 2018-19. Spending on Information Technology in India is expected to grow by over 9 percent to reach US$ 87.1 billion in 2018. And by 2025, revenue from the digital segment is expected to comprise 38 percent of the forecasted US$ 350 billion industry revenue.
In 2017 multinational Investment Bank and Financial services company Morgan Stanley reported that India’s GDP will reach $5 trillion by 2025. A brief analysis by TOI shows that India was the closest to the $5-trillion economy target when the estimates for Q1 2018-19 were released.
Emerging new business models and ecosystems in core industries – Banking, healthcare, Retail, Ecommerce, education, and financial services – collectively will contribute towards the economic value by 2025.
Winning the Stiff Competition
Tech start-ups grew above 50% in 2018. According to NASSCOM 7200-7700 tech start-ups incepted during 2013-18 and the overall base is growing at 12-15%. Alone in 2018 over 1200 startups were added. Amazingly, only 8 among so many rising technology startups made to the hall of fame becoming unicorns globally.
Among many success stories, also lies the story of Lavelle Networks – a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) platform for enterprise networks and the man who was helping Lavelle Networks grow its market share and revenue – Vishal Khare. Under Vishal’s leadership, Lavelle Networks was quick to bag its first 50 sets of customers which included big names like Max Life Insurance, Swiggy, Godrej, Gokak Mills, HDFC and many more. Even though the competition was stiff, Lavelle Networks was facing giants like Cisco, VMware, Citrix and so, with the right approach Lavelle made its mark in the Indian enterprise networking market, entering the Top 50 Start-ups in India, post which it got recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor and a Notable Vendor in the WAN edge infrastructure Report 2018.
Lavelle Networks expanded in India as well as overseas. Vishal’s unique approach to the sales the company witnessed a 10 times growth in revenue in the last fiscal year (2018). Expanding globally, Lavelle Networks is now poised to become the next big thing in India’s SD-WAN market.
Holding your Fort
Lavelle Networks dint achieve success overnight. To leave a stamp in the Indian enterprise networking segment, Vishal knew he would require the right set of strategies in his arsenal alongside a great product. First, a cohesive business ecosystem, second a great partnership model, effective market channels and a workable sales process to begin with. And at each step from a start-up to scale up, as Lavelle networks evolved, Vishal ensured an effective and sustainable sales process.
By now it’s clear, that emerging businesses eyeing to become the next big thing in the Indian technology market cannot spray and pray to survive. Businesses starting up need a cogent and defined approach to target their market and sell. As Vishal says – It all ends on the day you start without well defined sales strategy.
The key to success lies in figuring out the right approach to sales – – Defining the audience for your product? Building a defined sales process for your start-up, accessing sales cycles from the POV of an Indian enterprise client, and helping traditional enterprise clients transform with your solution- and a whole lot more.
Listen to Vishal Khare, Co-founder and executive VP and GM of Sales at Lavelle Networks in conversation with Naganand Doraswamy, managing director at Ideaspring capital in a podcast to learn great sales strategies that can help your growing business attract, win and compete against the harsh terrains of the Indian high-tech market.
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