From University Batchmates To Startup Success: Vodex Co-founders’ Journey Through Funding, GenAI
The South Bengaluru-based startup is confident about its capability of clocking USD 1 million ARR
The journey of Vodex co-founders, Anshul Shrivastava (CEO) and Kumar Saurav (CTO), exemplifies the typical trajectory of many startups around the world. Having known each other for over 14 years since their university days, they have been leveraging their shared expertise in building custom chatbots and voicebots for various businesses as the foundation for their entrepreneurial venture quite a few years now.
Their journey took a big turn when they identified a growing demand for a voice bot solution that could handle sales and marketing activities over phone calls. Encouraged by the positive feedback from potential clients, particularly from the US and Canada markets, they decided to pursue funding to scale their operations. This led them to approach venture capitalists (VCs) and investors, eventually securing pre-seed funding from 100X.VC.
GenAI, Sure – But What Helped Secure Funding?
With the initial funding in place, Vodex co-founders focused on developing their Minimum Viable Product (MVP), building the product, acquiring clients and generating revenue. However, they encountered challenges during the funding drought of 2023, where despite pitching to over 100 VCs, they faced prolonged uncertainty and no funding.
The situation improved at the beginning of 2024, coinciding with a resurgence in investor interest. Vodex had made significant progress by then, with a growing client base and approaching a million dollars in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in the US and Canada markets. Additionally, the buzz around generative AI, fueled in part by technologies like ChatGPT, further supported investor confidence in their company.
After engaging in discussions with several potential investors, including Unicorn India and Pentathlon Ventures, Vodex successfully secured USD 2 million in seed funding from these two entities.
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride. It’s been very challenging, but fun. We went through every emotion you can think of,” Vodex CEO Anshul Shrivastava told BW Businessworld.
A crucial aspect that investors appreciated about Vodex was the tangible customer traction they achieved from the beta phase onwards. “Investors prioritise businesses that have demonstrated the ability to attract paying customers and generate revenue. This customer-centric approach resonated with investors, indicating a strong product-market fit and potential for scalability,” said CTO Kumar Saurav.
Shrivastava echoed Saurav's sentiment, stressing the importance of striking a delicate balance between innovation and practicality. He said that while technologies like generative AI (Gen AI) are enticing, startups must ensure that what they are building is not just a simple wrapper over existing GPT and APIs.
“Investors are wary of solutions that can be easily replicated or imitated, even if they attract a large user base. Instead, they seek startups that offer unique, valuable propositions with sufficient barriers to entry to protect against competition from major players like Google or Microsoft,” said Shrivastava.
“GenAI has multiple use cases and more importantly to transform the landscape of tech businesses worldwide. We see disruptive capabilities in Vodex to emerge as a formidable player by applying the power of GenAI and SaaS to help enterprises manage their CRM engagements more efficiently.” - Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures
Exploring GenAI Before ChatGPT
Commencing their foray into the chatbot industry circa 2018, co-founders Shrivastava and Saurav initially operated as freelancers before establishing a professional team. Their prior venture yielded notable success, generating a million ARR over several years until approximately 2021. Recognising the potential of voice technology, they embarked on developing an MVP for voice bots, indicating a strategic shift towards this growing sector.
Despite their early success, the duo encountered challenges with traditional chatbot-building tools like Rasa and Dialogflow. These platforms proved laborious and fragile, requiring extensive time and effort for development while lacking robustness in handling conversations. Such limitations spurred their exploration into alternative solutions, leading them to experiment with large language models at the time such as BLOOM. This experimentation marked a turning point in their journey, catalysing a deeper dive into the realm of generative AI for the co-founders.
A pivotal moment arose in 2021 when they fine-tuned a large language model with real call data, witnessing a substantial enhancement in bot performance. By integrating this refined model with their existing NLU engine, they achieved a huge increase in question-answering accuracy, indicating the transformative potential of generative AI in their domain. This realisation prompted a strategic pivot in their company's focus, as they recognised the burgeoning trend towards generative AI and the opportunities it presented.
“We were working on generative AI kind of technology before ChatGPT was released,” said the Vodex CEO.
In 2022, the company, after acquiring pre-seed money from 100X.VC, redirected its efforts towards voice bot technology, acknowledging the evolving landscape and the imperative to adapt. This shift was underlined by their decision to incorporate the company (Vodex) officially in June 2022, a commitment to their newfound direction.
Gunning For 4X Revenue After Fundraise
The co-founder duo seemingly have a clear vision for their company’s future. They aim to develop generative AI-powered sales agents that can autonomously handle the entire sales process for businesses of all sizes worldwide. Their goal is to make sales more accessible and efficient, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – for now.
The plan involves launching the product within the next six months, followed by a beta phase and eventual productisation. Shrivastava and Saurav intend to focus initially on the SME market and then expand into specific industries, tailoring their solution to meet the unique requirements of each sector. Saurav stressed the importance of integrating sales strategies into their AI agents to mimic human behaviour effectively, which will be crucial for Vodex in the coming months.
By automating various aspects of the sales process, such as pre-sales activities, setting up meetings and even conducting calls, Vodex looks to reduce the reliance on human sales personnel and streamline operations for businesses. They recognise the trillion-dollar sales market opportunity in sales automation and are focused to empowering sales teams and facilitating business growth.
"Our vision for Vodex is to seamlessly integrate it into every business, regardless of size, to handle their sales processes. Sales is inherently complex, requiring extensive knowledge, precise communication, and costly training for experienced sales professionals,” said Shrivastava.
“We envision a future where every entrepreneur, whether starting anew or leading an established enterprise, can effortlessly implement Vodex and delegate the entire sales process. We aim for Vodex to shoulder the burden of sales operations, allowing businesses to focus on growth and innovation.” - Vodex CEO Anshul Shrivastava
The South Bengaluru-based startup is confident about its capability of clocking USD 1 million ARR and has sights set on at least a fourfold revenue growth over the next year as it plans a trajectory for the next 12 months.
