[CTQ Smartcast] Lessons in Podcasting, Sales and Marketing from a First-Generation Entrepreneur, With Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya
Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya is currently serving as Vice President (Sales) at CleverTap. He is also an entrepreneur and hosts the popular Shunya One podcast.
In this Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, we have talked about podcasting and the importance of audio-video channels for leaders in influencing customers as well as employees. We also spoke at length about his experience at CleverTap and how people in sales and marketing predict future relevance.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
Shiladitya’s outlook on podcasting
Shiladitya’s podcasting journey
Advice on how to start your own podcast
How can senior leaders adapt to the whole virtual mode?
Shiladitya’s role at CleverTap
How has sales and marketing changed post-pandemic?
How can sales and marketing function and employees stay relevant in the future?
How can individuals prepare for an AI-based future?
PLUS
Future relevance of traditional start-up centres, email newsletters and podcasts
LINKS TO BOOKS, PODCASTS, PEOPLE AND PLATFORMS MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
BOOKS
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
PODCASTS
The Future of Work with Ravi Kumar, President at Infosys
PEOPLE
Anand Jain, Co-founder, CleverTap
PLATFORM
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like Applying A Founder's Mindset To Learning New Skills, With Roshan Cariappa
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish: Shiladitya is Vice President Sales at CleverTap and hosts the hugely popular Shunya One podcast. So we picked his brains about podcasting, the importance of audio-video channels for leaders in influencing customers as well as employees. He's recorded over 150 episodes. So we asked him about how to get better at the craft of podcasting and the shows that he listens to. We also spoke to him about his experience at CleverTap and how the world of sales and marketing is changing. How should people in these functions predict future relevance? So if podcasts, start-ups, personal journeys, future of work are topics that interest you, then you will definitely enjoy this chat with Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya.
00:00:58
Harish: Hi, Shiladitya. Welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:01:01
Shiladitya: Hey, thank you so much, how are you doing? And thank you so much for having me.
00:01:10
Harish: Yes. So, you know, you are a trained podcast guest as well as a host. So there's not going to be easy trial balls for you. We are going to start with a so-called tough one right. So the first question for you. What do you know about podcasting that others don't?
00:01:24
Shiladitya: Oh, wow. Okay, that's a good one. What I know about podcasting is that it's surprisingly easy, right? People think that to be a podcaster you need to have some gift of gab or, you know, interesting setup or whatnot. But the truth is, I got into it, with no preparation, no planning, no prior understanding of it. And here I am some 150+ episodes of a show and doing I hope more of it every day. So yeah, podcasting is surprisingly easy. I tell people, whoever asks me that, they ask me for pointers and say, you know, tell me what I can do and what I can learn. I say usually if you like having a conversation with other humans, you do fine. So that's all you need.
00:02:17
Harish: Yeah. So what you're trying to tell me is don't be scared of it. Right?
00:02:21
Shiladitya: Exactly. Nothing to be scared of, of course not. Don't be scared of anything. But especially podcasting, I think it's very easy. And now in the days of Zoom, and doing a call like this is sort of normal.. You don't even have to worry about most people being presentable and having an interesting background and you know, having a decent enough setup for their home calls. It's actually very easy. You just need to find the time.
00:02:55
Harish: Yeah. So like you mentioned, Shunya One has done 150+ episodes now. How has the show changed, you know, over these 150 episodes, if you look back to the first few episodes and how things are now?
00:03:11
Shiladitya: Okay, that's also an interesting story, right? Because when we started the show, again, this is back in 2017, podcasting was not as cool as it is now, you know, I think podcasting was very new, especially in India, I started this with my co-host, Amit, the founder of IVM, and back then they were the only sort of mini studio doing anything in the podcasting realm. And the background was that he said, “Listen, podcasting is all about creating content, and tech and start-ups and entrepreneurship is a good space.” Obviously, well talked about space, I think, back then we were obviously the newspapers, the articles, everything, start-up ecosystem had arrived, it had just not arrived on audio on podcasts. And he said, he wants to do a show like that. I just wrapped up my last start-up and was figuring out what to do next. I said, Okay, I know a few people who might oblige, coming and spending an hour of their time with us. And mostly, it was me thinking that, hey, I tend to meet a lot of entrepreneurs, anyways. Back then you usually would travel to another city, or if there's someone in town who used to say, let's plan, you know, catch up over coffee or beer, and just exchange notes. Right? The start-up community is very, I would say, open to this sort of osmosis of hey, how are you doing? How am I doing? It's also like a sneaky little status check on am I doing stuff right? Because most founders are always you know, whatever stage of success they might be in, they always are questioning what could go wrong next. So I was fortunate to know a lot of people. And I said, okay, sure, let me try this out. We, you know, let's chat, which we would have done over beers or coffee, but with a mic in front of us. And that would be the only difference. So we started out like that. And we started out also thinking that we talk a lot more about current tech and current market. But the show very soon evolved to telling start-up stories and start-up journeys of the individual founders who were coming on as guests, because we saw that most people actually wanted to hear about that. And podcasting as a format, also, I think, allows for you to talk a lot more, or go into a lot of depth, which you would not go into, if you're writing the same thing in a blog post, you try to be more concise. If you were on a panel in, let's say, in an event, you would be obviously speaking, very sort of structured, talking points, your PR has allowed you to. So we soon realised that most people coming on the show liked telling elaborate stories, and people like listening to it. So we've moved on to be very sort of personal zero to one story, as the name suggests, you know, all the guests who come on the show, whatever their path may have been, to where they are today.
00:06:20
Harish: Yeah, that's very interesting. You know, before I go deeper into that, I wanted to draw a parallel line, you spoke about how the show changed. How over the last three-four years now, how has the show changed you?
00:06:35
Shiladitya: Oh, wow, the show has changed me for sure. Again, I think I was one of those little sceptic folks about doing something, which is not my natural, I would say, format, and again, not that I had another like, I was one of those folks who were never into really writing a lot. I mean, I tweet, I like Twitter because it used to be 160 characters. I didn't have my own blog post, I didn't have my personal brand as such, where I used to sort of put content up. And the show actually, sort of allowed me to do that. I think now, I definitely understand that you know, having doing this and being able to sort of maintain doing this as the show, as the host of the show, being able to reach out to people who I otherwise did not have in my network just to, you know, say, Hey, I'd love to have you on as a guest and talk about something and then obviously, recognizing that, yes, this is a credible brand. Of course, now, there are so many tech podcasts, but I try to underscore folks saying, hey, you know, we were one of the first few ones. So that's why we have so many episodes, etc. So I think the show has changed me because I realised that this is good, I would say personal capital for anyone to build, I think I see the value of it. Now, I see the fact that you know, being able to have a platform like this, being able to, like I said, get people to have access to people and share that with the audiences is a privilege, and I want to keep doing it as long as I can. So that's what's changed. I always start stuff with no expectations. Because I know things can bomb again, that's the founder mindset. But once things start rolling out, I feel I have a responsibility. So I think that's what's changed.
00:08:35
Harish: Right. Yeah. So if you were to, you know, you mentioned a couple of points here, right? Where you spoke about your personal social capital, that gets collected. There's a body of work on the internet now, right, and I can get a peek into your mind the way you are asking questions, what gets you curious when a guest says something, what are the kinds of questions that you ask, even though we met five years ago, I still have a very fair idea of you as a person, right? Because of the kind of questions that you're asking. This could be a great thing for leaders and founders, not just for small companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs, but even for the larger companies. We have some examples of some of these leaders like I think Ravi Kumar of Infosys has a great podcast that he hosts, but there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are also doing this, right. So what would your advice be to these people in terms of starting a podcast, should they be starting with this objective of building social capital? Or should they be looking at it primarily from the perspective of learning and should they have that marketing layer on top of it, or should it be a very personal decision, the pursuit of just meeting interesting people?
00:09:57
Shiladitya: So, yeah, let me try to break that down a little bit the way I see it, amongst the questions you shared. So I think having social capital is no longer a choice for especially a founder, or someone trying to build a company. Building a company requires you to be the spokesperson of the company, the torchbearer of why we are doing this, not just externally but also internally, right? I mean, for you too, let's say, attract talent, for people to join you on your mission to scale your brand, you are the representative of your start-up. So, you can't say that I won't be on Twitter, I will not have a social profile, I will just sit in my office and do my work anymore. Unfortunately, that's not the game being played globally. So that's unavoidable. And I think having a podcast or any sort of personal brand content just is an extension of that. If you do it well it can accelerate your growth, I would say, your presence in whatever domain you're trying to build a company in. And in fact, before going into what hosting or running a show might do, even showing up and being on such forums is itself the first step. And I think I've had founders who have shown up on our show, actually come back and tell me that people have seen your show. And I have found investors because of that people have seen me talk about my start-up and, you know, I've had employees who've reached out and joined us. So, clearly, there is momentum in which we'll get formed if you even participate in this conversation, wherever that may be. When it comes to building your own. I think that's where, you know, that's where people start to identify you as original sort of thought leaders. It's just like writing your own blog post, it used to be that. It used to be like writing an op-ed in a newspaper once in a while, that used to be the old school version of what we're trying what is happening today, maybe, right, but I think your own show your own podcasting channel, or at least some sort of outreach channel is a very good place to start on the personal brand. Especially because it is your own voice to things, instead of just your writing. You know, it's your own voice, your own thought process, people see and hear you in your own words, you get to say a lot more than trying to put it just in the literary sense. And the marketing and branding, there is nothing but just doing it. Well, I think that's also one of the things I learned in this journey, by the way. People have had podcasts around for a while, like I said that in India, it was very little, but whatever little was happening was also happening in a very amateur way. Like people had their own, you know, channels, YouTube channels had started. But we saw that the production quality and sort of a little bit of planning and a little bit of, I would say packaging, definitely helped uplift your content above the others. And that's something I think is now commonplace, not just podcasting, its videos, YouTube videos, it's now come down all the way to social media, right? If your Instagram is nicer looking and well organised, people tend to gravitate towards it. Because as an audience, we're purveyors of quality, right? So we, if you have a well-produced content, people just absorb it better. People like to go back to it, they feel that it's high quality, and they should listen, and they should absorb it more. So yes, I think if you can afford it, or if you really want to sort of use that space as a real big brand builder for yourself, you should invest in the production quality, and I'm sure your marketing department will be more than happy to help you out there.
00:14:14
Harish: Right. Having said that, the one thing that we noticed in the last year, post-March 2020, was when sort of the whole world changed, right? When people moved to the remote and hybrid is more of a 2021 thing. But when people started working from home a lot of the slightly older leaders realised that audio-video is now a very important part of even being a leader. Right? Because they suddenly now had to connect through these channels. They had to again build this, you know, they had to show up regularly, they had to be convincing and persuasive enough. And a lot of people struggle, especially the slightly senior ones, right? Because this was just not there. So what would your advice be to these kinds of people who are probably still trying to get to terms with this or people who are just getting to this because, you know, this is a very important part of building a culture in a company, right? You have to build that whole narrative. If you're talking about this, these are the ways in which those values are going to get propagated. So what is your advice to leaders?
00:15:28
Shiladitya: This is a very good question. And I think I had a conversation similar to this a few times with others who have struggled with the same thing, right? Again, most leaders, again, good leaders in their own right, even pre-pandemic, were always still seen as good leaders, whatever it is, you knew about them, right? It's more so internally, I think, what people have any founder or any leader does in their companies, that we do all the hands, we do sort of company meets, we do off-sites, a lot of culture building happens internally, for the company, what has had what has what the pandemic has, what about is that for even those internal events, now, you have to use, let's say, this audio and video media, right? So while that has itself been like a technology change for most people, right, that is at one level, it's also allowed for them to down to this sort of semi-internal and external presence, right? So I think people who have people who are used to doing you know, a lot more speaking to their own teams have sort of transitioned to this easily, it's just been a platform technology changes what it seems like, right, instead of me coming and talking, say, in a town hall, I'm now doing this, over hundreds of windows on Zoom. To be honest, it's not the same effect. I don't know how the kids are doing it in school, by the way, because even that's one of those things for most other people who have not sort of made that transition yet from audio to video are not able to do it. I think my advice is, start doing the internal team meetings a lot more. This is not just to build this personal brand, but to get used to this format. But I think that's also one of the things I've seen companies have struggled with within the last year and a half, right? I've heard a lot of folks saying that, you know, when they were in the office, they used to meet their leaders and the founders, I mean, depending on how big or smaller the company was. But you used to have this culture, which used to absorb indirectly or through various people in the office when it's when the world has become remote. And especially with more people joining new, newer companies while they were remote, this is something which has become a big sort of gap, at least initially, I've heard that people are not able to associate with the company or the leader, because they only show up on a handful of calls. And they talk about a few things. And there is some guy listening to the 250th Zoom window, who will never make eye contact with you. So it's been hard. But the ones who have successfully done this, I've seen that they've done this by over-investing a little bit at the start, right? Doing more conversation, showing up instead of doing all hands once in a quarter, we've had folks do one all hands once a month, right? So leaders showing up more often have two outcomes. One is your company sees more of you, which they otherwise were missing. Because otherwise, they would have seen you in the office and in and around things. So that's one effect. So it builds your culture, fundamentally, and second for you, as a leader, it forces you to sort of taking on this format a lot more. And it makes you get better at it. I've seen that people used to struggle for feedback on Zoom calls, right? Because if you're talking to a whole room of people, you don't get a sense of how many people are nodding their heads, smiling or whatnot. So people used to struggle with whether or not their words were being heard. After some time you get a sense of it, after doing this, you know when to pause when to ask a question when to sort of put a cadence to the kind of topics that you will be talking about if you have five things to speak about. People have gotten better at making the kind of slides they used to versus in-person versus video. So you get used to it and you get better at it. If you do it more often. I think that's the one single piece of advice. I think, instead of avoiding speaking opportunities, you have to actually do the exact opposite. You have to create more of them than you would normally have with you you're a bit your team and with the company. And the same has happened externally as well. I mean, the moment you get used to it, I've seen people now take it to the other extreme as well, like they can't stop talking which is also not a bad thing.
00:20:03
Harish: Yeah, in fact, that brings me to another point where we work a lot with, you know, companies, especially smaller companies, which are trying to propagate their culture. We help them sort of aligning on the culture manifesto. And then it's about, okay, we've created the manifesto, but everyone needs to actually keep reinforcing on a continuous basis. And then what we've seen is it is almost even on in the internal world, it's almost become like a content machine. Right?. Because, you know, if you don't have those physical cues, and in-person meetings, it is these content pieces, channels that are going to actually make sure that these values are being understood by everyone. Everyone gets what we are talking about can, in fact, be both synchronous and asynchronous, right? Because everyone is working at their own schedule, now, so you can't get everyone to come on to a live call, every day, right? So you have to create all of this content, keep it, you know, available for people to check out at 2 am because that's the slot that works for that person, right? So yeah, it doesn't work for everyone else, but you need to make it available. And this is where what we've been seeing is people who have been using these sorts of techniques and tools for the external world, right? Where marketers have been using these things, in order to reach customers and all of that, we are actually getting to start seeing these things employed with your internal employees as well, right. In fact, culture is why they say culture is a product, you know, and consumers, our customers for that, right.
00:21:54
Shiladitya: Absolutely, absolutely. Very, right. Totally agree. And that's one of those things, right? We have had to consciously do, companies have had to consciously do this. Otherwise, you just lose the essence of the team you were trying so hard to build over the years. Whether you were founded in the pandemic or whether you were, had to transition into it, you know, so yeah, I completely agree. It's one of those things. Audio and video as content, the mouthpiece is now a mainstay of every type of audience, you're dealing with internal external. Yeah, I completely agree.
00:22:31
Harish: In fact, I wanted to start talking about CleverTap in this context. But before that, your personal journey. So how did CleverTap happen in your life?
00:22:43
Shiladitya: Oh, wow. It's a good story there, too. I think it starts with the podcast itself, right. As I said, I wrapped up my last start-up, which I was building, you know, and again, it folded up after a lot of attempts to build mobile payments, which was way too early for as the world has shown. But I started doing the podcast, as a step one to again, come back to, you know what to do next. As a founder, you also want to feel inspired to build something, which is somewhat a personal challenge for you as well. Right? Because the most passionate ones are the ones who don't just operate just on the maths of building a start-up, like, Oh, what is a big company problem, which has a big addressable market, etc, it also needs to resonate with you personally. And in order to discover that I obviously was glued into the rest of the community, understanding what others are building, what is hot, what is interesting, what are those interesting challenges to pick up, and that's how the podcast started. In fact, the selfish motive behind the podcast was, I'll be able to meet some interesting founders and understand their growth stories, which will probably inspire mine. And in the course of that, obviously, I knew the folks at CleverTap and Anand, one of the founders there, personally, from quite some time, we spoke about, you know, working together in various ways. Well, before that, I think I was a user of that app as a product myself in my own products. And what led to me jumping on board was also that we were at a stage when the product had sort of matured, it was just out in the market. It was more, it was a free sort of, for developers for start-ups on the platform. But we could see that there was immense potential, we could see that there was potential for this to become an enterprise product and the world of SaaS, as it stood, was open for us to take. Why I jumped on board again, was a similar personal sort of partially selfish motive. And I've told this to Anand and so I can talk about it. You know, I said that I'm always going to be on the lookout for doing something of my own. Because that's just my natural rhythm because I try to always solve problems and see if I can build a company around it. But I jumped on board because I saw that CleverTap as a company was doing that as a product itself, right. We are just like any other SaaS platform, we help companies solve a certain piece of their problem. And one of the biggest problems we help solve is growth and retention, with CleverTap. And at the time, the India market and the start-up ecosystem, and even now, more so was at a juncture where everyone's trying to solve this growing problem, right? Everyone was looking at, how do I retain the millions of users that I'm acquiring. India was at the peak of its, you know, at the start of its sort of growth story, with Jio has just launched and all these start-ups coming out from the weeds. So, for me, personally, it was a chance to look inside, at what drives the growth of all of these big companies and big successful start-ups, right, whether you look at Zomato today, or you look at Paytm, or all of these guys, for me, as a part of CleverTap, I could understand what went into growing those companies as a vendor, as a partner in that growth. I thought that was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to actually learn that because, as a founder, I would have the same struggles. If I were to build a company tomorrow, I would also need to crack growth, I would need to crack retention, I would need to crack all of these sorts of technological yet go to market sort of challenges anyone has, right, depending on what you're building, if you're building a fintech company if you're building a food tech company, or an ed-tech company, you all have a formula that you need to sort of employ. So for me, that was one of the best places to do that from the inside. And now here I am, four years later, just going from one challenge to the other. We've grown the company from when I joined, we've grown it to more than 10x. So it's been quite a journey. And yeah, this is that's how that happened back then. And the story so far is exactly that. Right? We've kept on helping more and more companies to solve their growth and retention challenges. Whatever kind of company you may be.
00:27:50
Harish: Right, right. Yeah. So coming back to growth and retention, like we were talking about earlier, right. So CleverTap clearly deals with external markets these days with the customers. But if you know, content and internal employees becoming consumers of your culture's content is important. Then again, you're talking about the same two metrics, right? How do you retain and how do you keep them engaged? So do you see that happening? Is that already happening? Or do you see that happening in the near future? Where a platform that CleverTap is being used for internally…
00:28:29
Shiladitya: Actually, yeah, I mean, well, not CleverTap maybe, because as a product, we are definitely geared for that B2C sort of use cases. But I've started to see this already in let's say, the kind of HR products that companies use, right, we've seen, again, like most companies, we have a Slack channel and Slack sort of became this de facto alternative of where company communication happens, right? We have a lot of companies who are building this sort of building engagement, gamification, retention all into, let's say, your Slack itself. We have HR and payroll company platforms, which used to be the most boring, I would say, of tools, you have to use again, most employees have to use it only because they have to, not that they really want to do any more HR related work again. I may be sounding like I'm bashing the HR community, but I'm not totally. I think that that space has evolved, and had to evolve so much more in the last year and a half because you have to do so much more to retain employees than you had to before. At least you could give them the perks when they were in the office now when they're behind a laptop screen. That too when they want to be you hardly have access, right. So that's where I've seen tools evolve. I think there's a lot of stuff happening as I said on Slack where companies are hosting, built-in quizzes with their team, hosting social arts. They're hosting a whole bunch of personalised gamification that say around, you know, how many hours you're working, there are tools, which now help you not for the regimented use case of how many hours you're working for telling the company, but in fact, the opposite to tell you when to take a break, right, or tell you when a few other perks of the company are available to you, which you should utilise. So I think that sort of internal personalised engagement has massively increased, and there are tools for it. And there are all of these, I'm sure there will be only to see more of that, as we evolve as we get used to all of these things.
00:30:51
Harish: Correct. Yeah. Coming back to your sales role at CleverTap. How has the last, 18 months been? How has this changed your role and the way you work? And you know, the way you sell, how has that changed?
00:31:11
Shiladitya: Yeah, that's a good point. Let me first talk about why I even jumped on to the sales bit, right. And again, I want to share this because it might be very relevant to others who are at a similar decision-making point. I was not, as you would say, a career salesperson. Right, I didn't do an MBA, I didn't join as a sales trainee, and then climb the ranks in a sales function. My only experience was building my own companies. And you do a fair amount of selling as a founder as well, you just do it with a whole different level of passion. Because it's your own product, right? It's your own baby, it is something that comes organically to you. Most people when they are faced with joining a sales role. This is the first thing that they feel is a big blocker, right? I've had people come to me and say that, hey, I've never done sales in my life, I'll probably not be good at it. I tell them that I've said the same thing myself when I started here because I said this and I've only sold what I knew or what I could talk about. But that actually is one of the prerequisites of just being a good salesperson for anything. So whenever you join a sales job, you don't have to have sold in your life before, you should be able to talk passionately about anything for that matter if you have read a book, which you really love or if you've seen a movie which you really love And that's sort of your go-to anecdote or your go-to reference point in your conversations with friends, you are selling it. And that's what is being asked of you here. So when you join a sales company in a sales role, understand that the first requirement is that you know what you're selling, if you do that job, right. If you invest your time and effort to understand your product, or whatever function or whatever company you're joining, you will automatically be good at sales. So that's the first thing which I also sort of broke the mould with myself. I said, Okay, listen, if I'm going to be good at this, I need to understand CleverTap as if it were my baby as if I were the founder. And I think that's, and we actually started doing that. I built a team around myself, which focused on understanding the product as deeply as anyone in the founding team, or anyone in the product team or the engineering team, as much as you would understand the product. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to sell. And, in fact, we sort of came up with a concept, what we call, you know, just like you have full-stack engineers, which is a popular concept, we call it full-stack sellers now. So what full-stack selling in CleverTap, and now hopefully, elsewhere, is that you are not just the mouthpiece of you know what you're selling, but you're also the solution designer, you're also the person who gives demos, you're also the person who by and large solves technical queries. If not, obviously not expecting you to write code. But you have a sense of what goes where and how things work. And you are pretty much the whole soul of answering any buyer's questions. And when you do that, which we did at the time and continue to do, we saw the success rates are so much higher, because the person on the other side ultimately doesn't want to talk to a salesperson, right? I mean, the notion is when you're talking to a salesperson you're being sold. So that's the first mental barrier, you have to break, you're not trying to sell to the person, you're trying to solve a problem. And if you come across as a more knowledgeable person trying to solve their problem, you automatically win their favour. And that is, again, I know, this is a little bit of sales gyaan, but that's exactly what started. That's what we started indoctrinating at CleverTap when I jumped on board. And we've been doing that for the last four years very, very successfully. The last year and a half have obviously been completely different when it comes to the method of selling. I mean, we obviously used to do a lot more meetings, we used to show up, used to do a lot of stuff in person, because, again, the market, whether it's India or abroad, was used to that. People were used to salespeople and teams showing up giving you a presentation giving a demo, what we realised since we're selling a digital product, right, and we're by and large selling to digital companies. What I mean by digital companies is that their own product in which we integrate, right, which is usually a digital product, like, let's say you have a mobile app, or you have a website, these two things. So the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital products. And that's why selling those became I wouldn't say easier, but it definitely didn't have the handicaps of selling remote. People expect now that if I'm buying a digital product, I will converse with whoever I need to digitally, I mean, we'll set up a zoom call, we'll see a live demo on screen, we'll exchange notes on how this integration happens. They didn't hold the fact that there was no person right there in the room with them, against us, when it came to buying something like this, I think that's what we saw as a big leveller for us in our market. Because, unlike other folks where you're buying a service, you're buying a physical product, you need to sort of, I'm sure there were troubles with people who had to sell goods and services, which are a lot more physical. But for digital goods and services like ours, it actually became easier. We were able to multiply our I would say time because I could jump from a meeting with someone in Bangalore to a meeting with someone in Delhi within an hour instead of a day at minimum before. I would say we were very fortunate to be on the good side of the pandemic when it came to growth, especially because we are a digital company. And we were able to leverage that quite successfully to grow again, more than what we anticipated.
00:37:49
Harish: So, what I'm also hearing is that the world around you changed. But you were sort of prepared for that because you had already taken that stance of your sales teams being these full-stack sellers, right? This is why it's so much easier to adapt to this change. So what would you say, you know, people who are working in sales and marketing functions, how should they be working towards building their future relevance, because it's not the end of it, the world is going to change, right? You probably have AR/VR, whatever is the next thing they have to change. Yeah. So how should individuals be thinking about staying future relevant in the sales and marketing function in a world like this?
00:38:37
Shiladitya: Sure. I think that's a good question. Because we face it day in and day out, right? As a sales team, if we came up with something, which is four years ago, and if you're running the same show, in four years, let me be honest, we are not evolving, we're not going to be successful. There's someone smarter out there, doing something better. And while we were better prepared, I would say again, because of the market, we were dealing, and we were better prepared. And we were able to sort of capitalising on digital selling. I have also seen a lot more digital selling, which is what we are ourselves not doing yet, happening around me. And, you know, things like today also, we try to set up a call, we set up a meeting, we get people to show up and do a demo. And that's how you sell. I have now seen a next step of, you know, pre-empting that with, let's say, sending video messages as well. I have seen people now really start using video and audio, as we were talking about earlier in the show, as a content piece, even while selling like today, instead of getting an email. I have got an email with a video clip of the person talking to me, it's almost like a voicemail, a FaceTime voicemail of sorts, and that is a lot more personable than just some person writing an email to me. Think about it. And this is when I'm talking about people selling to me, right? And I've seen that little bit of added human touch to that email makes me want to at least acknowledge them. Otherwise, there are so many cold emails which people just ignore. I've seen that this little bit of, you know, personalization of someone putting their video saying my name and speaking in context, instead of it just being sort of a mass class emailer makes me want to be humanly want to reply to that person and say, hey, you know, let's do this, or let's not do this. So, I've seen that sales tactics and sales methods have evolved even more in the pandemic because people have had to, we will have had to out-innovate the market. And so while we, ourselves were, like I said, a little ahead of the curve, we still have a long way to go. And sales and marketing as a motion will always keep evolving with, you know, that's the whole point of it. Also, you have breakthroughs, sales are all about breaking through, getting that one or two sort of leads through while trying so many methods out. So I think audio video is a big, big part of that. And now since you spoke about the metaverse and what not. This is another sort of common cliche of sales, you also have to be where your buyers are, right? In the old world, this used to be, let's say, why people used to go to events, that you know why you used to do a booth and used to do an event and used to do whatnot. Now those are rare, right? I'm even hoping the world opens up so that we all can go back to those because I miss it. But you also have to now be where you're otherwise your buyers spend more of their time. I've now seen SaaS companies like ours who sell digital B2B tools. They never cared so much about, let's say Instagram, or about social media where you know, like, probably just Twitter, but they've never cared about the more popular B2C sort of social media outlets. But now I'm seeing them do that because they realised that the person buying on the other side, spends some time on social media, like a human, just like every other human as well. Right. So why should they only be bombarded with Coke and Pepsi ads or Cred and Unacademy ads? Why not a CleverTap ad or anything else that they might be buying or spending? Do you spend so much time on a tool? Right? You would think the brand should be more visible to you. And that's true. So I've seen B2B companies who used to not prefer this new age social media also going there. B2B companies are sponsoring stuff. As I said, Instagram stuff that folks who are you know, doing it on Snapchat, there are people doing Clubhouse, it has become a big audio medium, so you have to be where the buyers are. And you have to do whatever it takes to be heard in the new and evolving markets. I'm sure we'll have a metaverse booth soon. Most of our B2B brands, yes, yeah.
00:43:24
Harish: Yeah. So you know, you mentioned a couple of things in which you said that the personable and the human touch is what got you interested in saying, opening that email. A flip side of that is that individuals today also need to prepare how to work with non-human co-workers, right? You now have AI-based tools, which can probably create content, as good as a content writer, but it has to be like you said, if you just do a mass email with just that content created, it's not going to work. So there has to be the human touch, a lot of the things that can be automated that a program can do better, you should be doing that. So how should people be thinking about working with non-human colleagues?
00:44:19
Shiladitya: Wow. So non-human colleagues, I'm sure most people haven't even embraced that thought. To be honest, I think a little bit of AI that we might be already interacting with, on a regular basis is, like I said, just Slack bots and what other things have you. So I think it's a great future thought, right? Because this is where this is the future of most people's work, whether we like it or not, we will be dealing with some sort of artificial, non-human interactions and we have to be prepared for it. I think the opposite is actually happening first. I think there are people trying to train in AI to be a lot more human, so that we don't feel that we are talking to an AI, I think that's what people are really trying, right? I think, like, whether it's these automatic emails, or whether it's the, like the same slack bots or anything, everyone's trying to make them seem more human, so that it bridges the gap between us trying to deal with, let's say, a dumb robot or something like that. But as a person, how to prepare, I think you have to be prepared that non-humans are a lot smarter than humans when it comes to data. And when it comes to this world we are living in right, this is a non human first world, right? The digital world means non-human AIs have access to way more resources than you and me have when we sit on a laptop, we are still very human in our capabilities of searching and finding data and building connections and whatnot, whereas a non-human bot is way way faster. So I think we have to first adapt to doing what we are good at, and maybe keeping those human things with us and abstracting and outsourcing all the non-human efficient tasks to those colleagues. I think that's what we have to be prepared for. Which also is an interesting point now, I think allows us to go back to what we started talking about first, right? Why is content such a relevant piece? Now of personal brand content or whatever, just creating content? Why is it so much more important now, in the world, when content in general has exploded? It's more important because only through human real original thought is what will probably shine through. Especially when even the bots now have AI copywriters also right? So when all of that is done, when you have AI video, when you have AI everything, only true original thought and original content is what will hopefully shine through. So it matters all the more that you get good at it. You know, that's what I would say.
00:47:16
Harish: Yes, add your own voice.
00:47:20
Shiladitya: And do the human parts of it, do something which machines can’t, which is, day by day, very little, but we will still hold the upper hand, hopefully for a few decades.
00:47:33
Harish: Right. So the last few questions. What are the books, people, podcasts that you would recommend to say, founders who want to build future relevance for themselves or for their teams?
00:47:48
Shiladitya: Wow, lots, lots of them. I mean, I'm not a big book reader, as most other folks in my community, or founders at large are, that's the honest truth. I've read a few books, I try to read as much as I can. I try to listen and watch a lot more. I think that's where I am a consumer of, let's say, audio and video content. But, you know, I've read a few books, which have helped me along all this while. I think the one which I've spoken about most times is Zero to One, because that's the one book which gave ideas to Shunya One and that gave you other startup ideas, as well. And there are now much better versions of that, and a lot more startup books out there. So I won't mention too many. But I think when it comes to podcasts and content, I think that's where there's a lot more relevant treasure trove of stuff, which you might find, if you haven't, most people have they haven't yet heard the original series Masters of Scale. I think that was a really good series of podcasts, which spoke about all these big companies we see around us today. I know there are a bunch of others, post Shunya One, there are a lot more tech podcasts. There's one run by Accel, which is really nice, which again, has access to the same kind of, let's say, builders of podcasts that builders of large companies in India, especially obviously the folks in the startup ecosystem in India today, whether it's Your Story, all of these guys, they've all evolved into doing some great audio visual content and I think they're very relevant folks to keep track get a pulse of what's happening in the market. So yeah, these are your everyday sources, but the biggest one I think is just have your own voice. Be aware where your audience is so you don't have a Twitter yet, which is rare. You should be on Twitter. If you're jumping into audio, you can try Clubhouse. It's a little mixed bag. Right now. I think they've gotten a little chaotic. I don't know what the next platform is going to be. But yes, be on Twitter and follow some interesting people, and contribute to the conversation. If you contribute to the conversation, you automatically discover more and good, interesting content for yourself.
00:50:20
Harish: So the final section is where I asked for your hot takes on certain things. So what do you think is the future relevance of traditional startup centres like, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai in India, even say, Silicon Valley, what do you think is the future relevance of these traditional centres?
00:50:44
Shiladitya: I think they are still going to be relevant for a while, mainly because talent is no longer going to be centralised to those places. I think talent is now distributed. Your coders and programmers or copywriters, or whatever, marketers, your talent is now going to be fully distributed. But those centres are going to be relevant as the, you know, the hubs of your startup because whether you like it or not, the ecosystem still is sort of hinged around these centres. So I have to be in Bangalore. If not for my own team but for my customers, if I have to be in Bangalore, if not for my employees, but for maybe my investor community or for my peer network, as founders. So I think leaders and core teams will still have to be in these epicentres of the startups. But the team is going to definitely be fully remote. Think of it this way, right? It's a week of IPOs. I mean, it's the season of unicorns or whatnot, whatever you want to call it. These guys are all happening because they exist in these microcosms of like too much money being thrown at you too much. You know, there's this abundance in these epicentres. Like, if you're a startup, today, in tier two in a country in India, you have to first get known and be discovered, it's a lot easier to be discovered if you're in Bangalore, or Delhi or Mumbai. Similarly, if you're going public, you will go public on the Indian stock exchange NSE in Mumbai or the NYSE in New York, right? So you can’t avoid these sorts of traditional structures of these milestones that you want. So yeah, I think the relevance is going to be there. I think the hike value should go down, but relevance is going to be there. Right? So you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to get a job anymore. But you may have to be in Silicon Valley to found an iconic company and have it get discovered.
00:53:02
Harish: Got it. Okay, what is the future relevance of email newsletters?
0:53:07
Shiladitya: Oh, diminishing. Especially as all the things we just spoke about, right? Email newsletters are great for compounded sort of a bunch of information to digest at once, but they are not built for the up and coming short form, short term attention span audience, by and large, the world is becoming 15 seconds of video and audio consumers. I know there are a lot of folks like us. Sorry, I put you in the same. There are, there's going to come a time in the world when there are a lot more younger folks. And that's happening sooner than you think. And those guys don't want to read an email newsletter. They rather just consume the same thing in a 15-second video.
00:54:04
Harish: Right. Okay. And final question. I think the most relevant one today, what is the future relevance of podcasts?
00:54:11
Shiladitya: Oh, thriving, I would say the future relevance of podcasts is looking good. More because again, we are the newsletter of the audio and video world. If you think about it, right? We are the weekly or monthly or bi-weekly show which someone wants to listen to and tune in while they're doing something else. Right? Passive listening podcasting is you know, driving chores, whatever have you. If you're a pro podcast listener, you probably listen at 1.2x or 1.5x. I've had people who have told me that I can't talk to humans anymore because it's only 1x and so I don't want to go there. But I think we are the newsletter of the new world, we are the one, we are the compendium at the end of the week, which someone wants to listen to and absorb when they are at leisure. Or when they're out for a run or for a jog or as passive listening, but when I'm actively listening, I just want to get through it in a few taps. So I think podcasts will only thrive. So yes. Let's all keep doing that.
00:55:36
Harish: Yeah. On that note, Shiladitya, I think we covered a whole range of topics from podcasting, the art of podcasting, how to get better there to your personal journey, getting into CleverTap or how things have evolved in the sales and marketing space for CleverTap. So we covered a whole range of topics. And I think, yeah, we are heading towards the future of work and the future of everything. And hopefully, podcasts remain relevant as you said.
00:56:13
Shiladitya: We have it in us. Yes, we might as well do it. We started off doing something which most people weren't doing. I'm sure we’ll evolve. Don’t worry Harish, me and you have our job yet.
00:56:21
Harish: Yes. On that note, thanks a lot Shiladitya, this was a fantastic conversation.
00:56:29
Shiladitya: Thank you so much for having me. A really good chat. And thank you to, you know, the whole team for doing what you're doing and creating great content.
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