Building a SaaS enabled marketplace for Indian Manufactures ft Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-Founder, Sourcewiz

Aug 23, 2022

Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-Founder of Sourcewiz, shares his journey from being an Entrepreneur to becoming a VC and then going back for Entrepreneurship. He discusses learnings from his previous venture and mistakes observed as a VC, key criteria for selecting a market, and getting their first paying customer. The podcast also explores difficulties SaaS startups face when pitching to VCs, finding customers for an Indian manufacturers marketplace, transition to exploring the manufacturing space, decision-making process, initial pricing strategy, and Matrix's support and alignment with vision.

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Introduction

00:00 • 4min

Becoming an Entrepreneur After Working as a VC

03:37 • 15min

Finding Customers and Understanding Industry Segments

18:51 • 3min

Transition from Quitting to Exploring the Manufacturing Space

21:49 • 13min

The Decision-Making Process and Problems Solved

35:03 • 7min

Initial Pricing Strategy

42:01 • 20min

Matrix's Support and Alignment with Vision

01:02:13 • 10min

How can an experience being a VC come handy while starting up? To answer this today we’ve with us Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-Founder, Sourcewiz.

Prior to starting Sourcewiz, Divyaanshu had already tasted entrepreneurship with his first venture in EdTech space, Connect2Teach in London. Post that after working with EY-Parthenon for a brief period of time, he joined Bessemer Venture Partners in California, United States.

At Bessemer he focused on EdTech, Consumer Tech for India/SEA and Enterprise/SMB SaaS being built from India/SEA for the world.

In today’s episode, we talk with Divyaanshu understanding his journey from being a Entrepreneur to becoming a VC and then going back for Entrepreneurship, his learnings and networks from his VC-period which came handy while starting Sourcewiz and more.

Notes -

02:24 - Intro

03:53 - Early Career and background in Venture Capital prior to Sourcewiz

07:35 - After VC what made him come back as an entrepreneur?

09:38 - Learnings from Mistakes from his previous venture

13:02 - Mistakes he observed other founders make while being a VC

15:04 - Key criterias for him while selecting a market from a VC’s lens

20:03 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?

21:58 - Quitting at Bessemer Venture Partners to starting up Sourcewiz

31:10 - Connecting with Sajith Pai from Blume Ventures

35:02 - Identifying and Focusing on the problem statement within SaaS

41:08 - Getting their first paying customer

44:45 - Figuring out a scalable GTM for Tier-II customers

47:34 - Acquiring 400+ Paid customers in within first year

49:20 - Building a marketplace and its current traction

53:59 - His path to a $1Mn ARR and then for $10Mn ARR

56:16 - Building mechanism for scale

1:00:34 - Unknowns in the market they are still figuring out

1:02:12 - Closing their second round of Seed funding with Matrix Partners India

1:05:02 - Selection criteria for Angel Investors

1:06:44 - Key pointers of Do’s and Don’ts for new founders

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