Varun Chandran. He’s the founder and CEO of Corporate360, a big data marketing software startup. He bootstrapped the company in 2012, grew the business into multimillion dollars in revenue with international clients and 40 employees across 5 countries. Prior to Corporate360, he worked for some of the leading technology companies like SAP, Oracle, Dell and Netapp in 3 different countries. He’s a college dropout and a national footballer. He loves data science and travelling. Under his leadership, Corporate360 became the first international startup from Kerala, bringing IT jobs that foster social empowerment. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Google Apps
• How many hours of sleep do you get every night?— 4 hours
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Build something that changes lives”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:12 – Nathan introduces Varun to the show
• 02:00 – Corporate360 is a sales intelligence data company for B2B enterprises
• 02:08 – Corporate360 is a SaaS business that sells their software through subscription
• 02:30 – Corporate360 has standard pricing
  • 02:38 – Typical deal size would range from 20K onwards, annually
  • 02:48 – They have some monthly contracts, too
  • 02:57 – “We are evangelizing data as a service model as opposed to buying a marketing list”
• 03:33 – Corporate360 was launched in 2013
• 03:40 – Team size is almost 70 in 5 countries
• 03:47 – Corporate360 is totally bootstrapped and they’re reenlisting profits back to the business to grow it
• 04:00 – Varun was 30 when he started Corporate360 and it was his first take on entrepreneurship
• 04:14 – Varun spent 8 years in the corporate world
• 04:26 – Varun had sales development and marketing roles
• 04:43 – Varun started the company with minimal capital of less than $10K
  • 05:02 – Varun used the capital to learn data science and hired contractors from India and the Philippines
  • 05:22 – The initial investment was for building the application, launching the website, and a basic outreach email campaign
• 05:55 – Customers use Corporate360 differently
  • 06:01 – There’s inside sales, analytics, campaigns, marketing and for sales operations
  • 06:18 – One of Corporate360’s customers is from Japan—they wanted to run a competitive attack and get competitive intelligent software
  • 06:30 – The company from Japan started a subscription and they gave reference to teams in China, Singapore, and eventually to the Europe and US market
• 07:08 – Corporate360 is currently serving 300 customers
  • 07:22 – They currently have 40K seats
  • 07:28 – Seats per user license is sold only for inside sales
  • 07:35 – Analytics and marketing are based on data and not per seat
• 07:58 – Corporate360 average deal size will be per user
  • 08:04 – Varun shares how an inside sales deal works
• 08:52 – “We are not part of a data syndicate”
• 09:00 – Corporate360 source their data from their own algorithms
• 09:37 – FullContact focuses on getting data from syndicates
• 10:27 – Varun shares how they differ from other data sources
• 12:06 – When you subscribe to Corporate360, you can get a 360 degree viewpoint of 7 modules
  • 12:22 – Corporate360 provides detailed information about the leads that they have and why they are the best fit for your company
• 13:30 – Average ARR
• 14:00 – Gross customer churn
  • 14:16 – Corporate360 designs their services based on client feedback
  • 14:46 – Churn is less than 10% annually
  • 15:12 – Most of their customers are startups
• 15:51 – CAC
  • 15:58 – Corporate360 doesn’t have field sales and just 7 account managers
  • 16:20 – They tried LinkedIn ads as paid ads
  • 16:34 – They spent $200K on LinkedIn last year
  • 16:47 – The budget for paid acquisition will go down this year
• 17:15 – LTV can be from $45K to a million
• 17:36 – Corporate360 headquarters in Singapore
  • 17:40 – They have a large BPO center in India and Philippines
• 19:40 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. Small capital can go a long way—don’t be discouraged if you are beginning with little.
2. THe data space is quite saturated—have something that sets you apart from the data syndicate.
3. Build something that changes lives.

 

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives