Anand Jain, Co-Founder, CleverTap
Anand Jain is currently the Co-Founder of CleverTap. Previously, he was the founding CTO of burrp.com, India’s largest local reviews and recommendations platform out of Mumbai, India. burrp.com was acquired in 2009 by the publicly traded yellow pages company, Infomedia 18 Ltd (now merged with Network 18). Prior to burrp.com, Anand was based out of the US - in Seattle and San Francisco, where he has worked with Motorola, AT&T and Brience. He has more than two decades of experience architecting and building software with significant experience leading engineering, design, quality and IT teams. In conversation with Dominic Rebello, he speaks about how the Indian consumers are evolving to the fast growing mobile internet ecosystem and how his company plans to stay ahead of the curve.
What drives you?
In my professional career of over 25+ years, I've donned the hat of an entrepreneur multiple times. I've also worked in companies like Motorola, AT&T Wireless and Network18 as an employee. Even during my corporate stints, I've acted as an entrepreneur - taking on new initiatives, assembling teams and being goals driven. The mantra of making tomorrow better motivates me to give my best each day. I started CleverTap to make app engagement personalized, contextual and timely. We’ve come up with this idea of sustained growth – where you can set multiple touch points with your users in their lifecycle.
How big is the potential for a business like yours? Any major customers that you now cater to? What kind of numbers do you expect from a business like yours? Any statistics to compare with international standards?
Our dream is to be part of every app that's published on the app store. Today, we power some of the big brands like - BookMyShow, Black Friday, Ixigo, Club Mahindra, India TV, Voonik, Faasos, Burger King, Streamago. We currently work with over 1500 customers.
How do you plan to scale up; raise funds through seed or venture capital or simply grow the old fashioned way through rising turnovers?
We started up in 2013. We're today backed by two of the best investors out there - Accel Partners, and Sequoia Capital.
Who would primarily be your consumer audience?
We cater to customers all sizes - whether it's a two people startup, to a large enterprise having millions of users. We've seen traction with customers in the following categories - Travel & Holidays, Event Ticketing, Price comparison, Media and Entertainment, Ecommerce.
Where do you see yourself five years down the road?
In five years, we see ourselves working with most of the Fortune 500 customers.