Keeping up with our roadmap of connecting with startups across India and in continuation of the Razorpay RevUp Startup Series, we recently hosted RevUp Chennai, an event that focussed on sharing insights about how to build and market products that users love.
Entrepreneurs are driven by unflinching passion to build products that aim to fulfill specific problems; however, successfully building products that convince customers still remains a gordian knot for most startups.
RevUp Chennai, the second event of the RevUp Startup Series, was hosted on the 24th of February at IIT Madras Research Park. The 2 hour power packed event hosted some eminent industry leaders and saw a participation from over 120 enthusiastic startup entrepreneurs from Chennai.
The speakers for RevUp Chennai were:
- Siddharth Dhamija, Chief Growth Officer, Razorpay
- Gourav Bhattacharya, VP, Matrix Partners
- Rajendran Dandapani, Director of Engineering, Zoho Corporation
A quick snapshot of session # 1: Idea to Execution – How to Master Product Distribution and Achieve Exponential Growth by Siddharth Dhamija
Siddharth Dhamija, Chief Growth Officer at Razorpay sharing his insights about achieving exponential growth in a short time period.
Being one of the earliest members of Razorpay, Siddharth has driven Razorpay to make 20X in revenue in a matter of just 9 months. He spoke about how investing in rigorous research, listening to feedback and addressing actual product gaps does not only help in building a sound product, but also paves the way for effective sales and marketing strategies. He further shared important insights about structuring a lean sales team and building strong brand advocates both inside and outside the organization.
Knowing your customers is the key to growth. This philosophy is part of Razorpay’s DNA today; every employee from the CEO to a fresher attends to customer support queries once every month. This is maniacal focus about our customers which has helped us achieve significant growth in a short time period
Siddharth Dhamija
A quick snapshot of session # 2: What VCs Look for in the Products they Fund – Some Key Insights from Gourav Bhattacharya
Gourav Bhattacharya, VP at Matrix Partners explaining how VCs look for product-market fit while evaluating investment opportunities.
VC firms and institutional investors play an important role in the growth journey of most startups today. Gourav Bhattacharya, VP at Matrix Partners, one the foremost VC firms in India today spoke about the guiding principles that VC firms use in order to evaluate brands and products before investing in them. He also spoke about the diverse portfolio of investments handled by Matrix Partners and what it takes to successfully raise funds from investors. This was followed by an interactive Q&A sessions where the audience put forth several questions to Gourav on readiness of a startup for funding, the VC ecosystem in India amongst others.
A quick snapshot of session # 3: Conceiving, Nurturing, and Marketing a Software Product – Some Unusual Approaches by Rajendran Dandapani
Rajendran Dandapani speaking about product philosophies that helped Zoho to become a world-class product company.
With several years of experience building products, Rajendran Dandapani, Director of Engineering at Zoho, spoke about the core philosophy behind creating stellar product experiences. He shared insights about how innovation, agility and having a customer first approach helped Zoho create valuable and differentiated products that garnered mass consumer adoption.
Rajendran explained about how product development should be combined with effective sales strategies in order to be successful. He also spoke about the three important philosophies of Ethos, Pathos, Logos that can be used to connect with your target customers on a deeper level.
The core belief of the three philosophies are as follows:
- Ethos is an appeal to customer’s sense of ethics by showcasing trust, reliability in the company.
- Pathos is an appeal to customer’s sense of emotion. The aim is to get an emotional response by showcasing how you build products, the challenges you face and most importantly the pain points that the customer faces and how they can alleviated.
- Logos is an appeal to customer’s sense of logic by presenting facts, proven results and accurate forecasts.
The event ended with a networking session where entrepreneurs got the opportunity to interact and share ideas with the speakers and fellow event attendees.
Are you an entrepreneur or someone who is interested in starting up? Find out more about the RevUp startup series by dropping us an email at events@razorpay.com.
