The Onsite & Offshore Talk with Suresh Ashok
Welcome to the Onsite & Offshore talk show. A dedicated Podcast for Professionals involved in Offshore projects, where we chat with, Business Owners, Project Managers, analysts and Software Developers who have successfully supported their overseas clients from India and connect with entrepreneurs who outsource the work to offshoring firms.
In each episode, Host Suresh Ashok brings out the most inspiring stories of his guests. He explores their journey and how they got to where they are now. He also delves into the strategies that have helped them reach their goals and the lessons that can be learned from their experiences.
Regards,
Suresh Ashok
https://onsiteandoffshore.com/
The Onsite & Offshore Talk with Suresh Ashok
Behind the $1.5 Million Deal: Kapil Dev’s Road to Sales Victory
Curious about turning challenges into million-dollar successes in international sales? 🚀
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Kapildev Arulmozhi sales powerhouse and co-founder of Infisign Inc and Entrans Technologies. In this episode, Kapil opens up about his transformative journey—from navigating personal challenges to excelling in global sales.
🎯 Key Highlights:
🔹 Career Journey
- From humble beginnings in the BPO industry to co-founding two successful companies, Kapil's rise to international sales success is nothing short of remarkable.
🔹 Sales Insights
- Kapil mastered the art of client rapport, blending cultural insights with sharp conversational strategies. He shares his gripping story of closing a $1.5 million deal after overcoming a misstep—an incredible lesson in resilience and adaptability.
🔹 Career Milestones
- With key roles at Aspire Systems and TVS, Kapil emphasizes the importance of preparation, persistence, and resilience in his success.
🔹Environmental Activism
- Balancing his career with passion, Kapil leads Live for Others, an initiative restoring Chennai's natural beauty, and manages a 450-member environmental organization.
🎧 Tune in for actionable insights on building strong client relationships, thriving in international sales, and maintaining work-life balance—all packed into this episode!
Don't miss out on Kapil's wisdom and his story of success.
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Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in. Welcome to another episode of the Onsite and Offshore podcast. I'm your host, Suresh Ashok, founder of Munsee Infotech with a passion for selling and supporting offshoring projects, where we chat with business owners and professionals involved in offshoring initiatives and also connect with entrepreneurs who outsource their work to India. Let me introduce my guest for today's episode, Mr Kapil Dev, a million-dollar sales professional who began his journey in inside sales within the BPO industry. Now he's a co-founder of InfiSign and Entrance Technologies. Kapil has been instrumental in closing million-dollar deals from India. He's here to share his incredible journey and valuable insight with us. Welcome to the show, Kapil. How are you doing today? I'm good. Suresh, how are you? I'm great man. This was long due. It's great to finally chat with you. I've been looking forward to this conversation, Kapil. My apologies, I delayed it for a long time. I mean, we've been discussing this for the last two what six months?
Speaker 1:now three months yeah, almost like three years. Yeah, six months, you know, I also went for a couple of round trips after that yeah, so thank you so much, kapil.
Speaker 2:It means a lot to me a couple, as you know. Like you know, I've started this podcast based on the team on site and offshore, so we've been interacting with some wonderful guests who have done lots of work in offshoring business, supporting their their client overseas. I know you have this fantastic track record of international selling, so I'll dive straight to the topic. When did you begin your journey in selling to an international audience?
Speaker 1:Okay so I started my international selling in 2010. Uh with bpo right. Uh basically like I started um lead generation for uh us um education uh sector, like basically I worked with universities and uh start working on that. I think it's pretty much like 14 years of international selling journey so you started your career in bpo selling yes, I started in 2010 with education sales folk.
Speaker 1:Then I slowly moved into almost like everything. I started selling like orange mobiles, even like a lot of medical newsletters, then stock market and then, like, came into id services and products right, and which market was this?
Speaker 2:I think, at those times, predominantly it was this market we were targeting right.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, it was purely in the US, but for me I got a very good experience in terms of focusing on both Europe and US, because our companies, like the company that I was working, actually work both in the UK and US. So I start like pretty much my shift in the afternoon like covering almost half of the day for UK, then half of the day for US.
Speaker 2:So you were exposed to selling to international audience from a very young age, I think in 2010,. What was your age? I mean 20 in the 20s or I think like 2010, 23,.
Speaker 1:something like that 23.
Speaker 2:And what kind of preparation did you go through? I know like in a very early, you know young at that time. So what kind of preparation did you go through? You know for your to get that exposure to selling to the international audience?
Speaker 1:But preparation, if you look at it right, you know I got like beautiful mentors basically when I started, right, you know I got a couple of good seniors who's already been doing that. But the preparation is very different, right, and I used to watch a lot of movies with subtitles. First, like when I was, I started selling with US. I pretty much like understand the US landscape, like start off with, I'm sure. Like understand the us landscape, like start off with, I'm sure, like you know, right, when you enter into the bpo, right, you're selling, right, you know the first thing they do is like understand the us from the basics, right, starting from time zones, you know, understand how the people receive the overseas audience for them. And you know, like we go with the pseudonyms and all those things. Yeah, true, yeah, what was your pseudonym? Yeah, my name was jeff thompson.
Speaker 2:Jeff thompson, my god, yes you know what was my name? It was kevin wilson.
Speaker 1:Yeah it was crazy, like first I was named as a brad, you know, I thought like little, a little oldie name. Then I went to jeff and je was also a little oldie, so it was like it was good actually, like you know, fun where we started like we have to pretend like Jeff Thompson and start working on all the accent, but most of the time that they easily get, we easily get caught with them. But still like love to manage that. And apart from that, you know, I pretty much focus on like I really, like you know, do my work in a very best way. So I started working on each and every aspects of what is america looks like. You know, how you even, like you know, pronounce their streets, avenues, boulevard, and understanding, like you know how the names looks like you know, if you look at in the us, if you, if they are robert, you know you have to call them bug, they're william, you have to call them bill.
Speaker 1:So a lot of like different kind of tricks to, like you know, talk to them as well, right, so so learning the basics is very important. Basics is not just, you know, understand um the landscape. You have to understand the culture, what they really like in sports and what kind of sports is really top there to build a conversation. For example, you know I, I teach, I learn baseball. Then I go on, like and understand what is nba and how the players are like. You know, welcome in america. Then, um, soccer, right, you know, here it's football, it's soccer. Then american football is completely different. So you have to learn every aspects of like how america work. Then it's very easy for me to penetrate it.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely. I also have lots of memories where people, the moment I say, listen, I'm Kevin Wilson, calling from so-and-so company, the next response, immediate response no, you're not Kevin Wilson, man, I know that You're calling from India.
Speaker 1:The worst thing is, like you know, they just say you're calling from India, right? No, they say you're calling from Pakistan. You're calling from Pakistan, you're calling from Bangladesh, I'm calling from India. I myself, like you know, go into polls sometimes with furious of, like you know, nationality and all those things. Sometimes it's crazy but still, like you know, if you look at it you easily get caught. But you know you can easily navigate those things when you learn their language to speak. So that's very important.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Now things have changed. Now I don't think people use pseudonyms because everybody knows it. Even in the US or UK or in Australia People know it. There are offshoring companies sitting in India who provide this customer service support or selling support to their clients from India. So they are aware of it. I think now things have changed. I don't know how the BPO industry works now. When I started my not started my career, but again got exposure, first exposure to international audience through a company called Infobase where I was selling direct TV and dishnet.
Speaker 1:That was a satellite connection which I was selling at that point. Oh, it was very difficult. I know like selling the connections and little kind of, like you know, home tools is very difficult because I used to work on this installation right for a UK project the house installation. They have to come and like, replace your like roofs and everything. It's very difficult, it's hard.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, in the sales call when I used to do this directory, we had this network selling. If the person shows some interest, that call is to go for an hour Because once he's agreed like, okay, fine, you know, go with the like, I would like to purchase this product. We would like to also bring the technical team to understand the infrastructure requirement, the cables and other stuff, and also we used to get the credit card information over the phone itself. So once whatever information we have provided as a sales pitch start to that person, uh, the call gets was was getting transferred to the quality team, like you know, just to verify and double check. So the entire process would take at least for an hour and a half. Uh, for that particular sales closure, you know, and while selling directly to indonesia, right?
Speaker 1:right. Right, it was a different selling right. You know, even if, because I used to to work for one of the university, right, you know where the student is okay to or agreed for the business program or any kind of program that they choose. Immediately I have to like do the live transfer to the university where the university real advisor start talking to them. Like you know, we finished the admissions then and there, in the form, will take at least like 1.5 hours.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult absolutely, and what are the biggest challenge you've faced so far while selling to an international audience from India?
Speaker 1:the challenge is the same thing. Like, you know what we prepared for, right, you know, because when I start exposing to the international market, the first thing is communication. Communication, you know, right, most of the indians, um, like us, you know, we started talking english, you know, only by translating what we think in our head, right, and now it has to go through a nerve system like 30 seconds. You have to translate, it has to come into your heart. Then it's to come come into your mouth. The first thing is stammering problem. You know, I have a lot of stammering problem in terms of, like you know, uh, phrasing the right sentence to the customers and all those things. And when I start working on the communication slowly, then I understand, okay, it's just not communication. You also need to speak with the right kind of, like you know, accent and the sound and you have to sound, like you know, commando with them. You know you cannot just go talk very lame and say your voice has to be, like you know, super bold in terms of making them listen to your words. So, very, very, uh, different challenges initially, then, once this thing you know, sorted out, and then, uh, the real challenge is, like, um, go through the process. Right, you know, understanding and closing the sales is very different, right, because most of the time we don't have the patience to listen to the customer. They initially, like, when I talk to customer, I only like attempt to answer every questions, right, I never listen. Now, like, if you look at it, it's completely different. The challenge is, like you know, most of our people, like we started in sales, they always uh, go and, like you know, throw or whatever the answers we know, throw, whatever the answers we know and whatever the solution we have. So we can't do that. We have to listen to them. Right, you know, when you start listening to them, uh, that's completely very different. So our challenge is really big.
Speaker 1:Then, um, understanding the landscape is super, super, uh, different for me, right, and um, coming from chennai, only dealing with the guys in a very different way, and all of a sudden, like you know, you stepped into audience. You know, um, for me, like, the transformation is very difficult in terms of, like, pretending to be a professional and, uh, what do you see? The international sales, uh, guy, right, so then I start preparing. It's really good. Then the real thing is, like you know, um, the challenge is I work very randomly in ad hoc and uh, then I learned like no, that never gonna work out. You have to uh, you have to profile everything, even you know, start out with understanding the customer and know before them, before you call them, and all those things right and kapil, you have a very you had a very impressive sales career.
Speaker 2:You're still front-ending sales in your organization. You worked for Aspire System. You worked for TVS. Whatever I've learned so far from you, like in a during an offline conversation, you've been a great performer and in TVS, I think you know, in international sales and IT sales, you broke some record in terms of sales revenue was concerned, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep Suresh, you know, yeah, so I….
Speaker 2:But you have to admit, right. I mean, everybody knows in our circle that you're a very top, you know sales guy. Anywhere you have worked, you have grown. You started from the scratch. For example, in Aspire System you started as a business development executive. From there, you know, moved to business development manager, then head of business development yep, absolutely, yes, you know, I know.
Speaker 1:You know because you know we work, we, we are lucky to work both. You know, because I'm lucky. Actually, I learned a lot of things from you as well. Right, and um, aspire, it's purely um, you know, I came without knowing anything about ID services. Then it really, like you know, took me off into a very different journey. Like that gave me very different things. If you ask me, like how I'm still sustaining as a top professional, and because you know, for Aspire, you know I have closed, good, you know, multi-million dollar deals. You know, to offshore, I never even met customers. Then, moving TVS is a very, completely different journey, right, you know, when I started at tvs, uh, I started with, like you know, 100k target portfolio. Then I ended up with, like you know, 25 million dollar revenue generation, uh, sales, uh, team right, right, it was a quite interesting journey so far, but I can definitely explain about, definitely explain about how I started my process and moved towards it.
Speaker 2:Right. Just one thing to add to it. When did this transition happen from product selling? Because you started your career in BPO. What made you to switch to the IT industry and software sales?
Speaker 1:Absolutely the BPO that I was working with. I worked with a lot of small BPOs for one or twoPO. Then all of a sudden they started a product for some universities. Then they were just, like you know, trying to hire outside people. Nobody interested in taking the first step. Then they do some job posting internally. Then I said, like I can try out and see like how it can move into business. I started product selling for them for the university. I got great luck and a great the transformation started there. Like I closed like a couple of good multimillion dollar deals for them because it was a luck. I don't know. Like when I called them they said interested and I still remember like in three or four level, call it or move into a sales. It's really a great stuff to start with. Moved into a sales. It's really a great stuff to start with.
Speaker 1:Then I was thinking, like you know, I got into some kind of box where I'm selling only the sector of education, nothing else. Then I was thinking like I have to move out and right time now I found aspire through one of my colleague who worked with me in q sign. Right then he he told me, like you know, probably you could try out. Then I moved into services. It's purely a different journey, right? You know, the business development journey slowly started in QSign. But when I joined Aspire, then I learned a lot of things. You know, a completely different process, right. Here it's everything ad hoc. Whatever I do is sales in QSign, because it's a new company, new product. I wanted to hit everything, so I hit.
Speaker 1:But Aspire per, when I came in, structured and you, you get assigned to the service lines. You can only sell that and you get assigned to particular leads. You can only work on that. So a lot of different process happened. But still, like you know, I have to challenge myself and go out of the box always. You know, the only thing is I'm still like, good in sales only because, you know, I never listen, whatever the boundaries that they created, right, and I have to go out of the box and think and create more things. For example, you know, in Aspire we have to call only 100 accounts, right, I cannot live with 100 accounts. True, I reach 100 accounts in one day. So I go push beyond that and I generate my own leads. I started in LinkedIn. Then I started building a lot of conversation. Then it's really difficult, different journey, so we shall have some.
Speaker 2:Do you recall any closure, for example, how the lead was generated and what all the activities were involved and how you generated the lead as well, what was your first pitch to that particular prospect and how that got converted into an opportunity and what was a project? I mean, you don't have to mention the client name again. You know that I can mention.
Speaker 1:You know, okay, go ahead, because you know this is one of the greatest deal I ever closed in my life, right, and uh, that was that was very different. Right, you know, it was a very different scenario for any sales guys. Right, I called the company um and the cto, okay, called, uh, mike creaseman just to clarify, you were doing lead generation at that point of time, right?
Speaker 1:yes, cold calling and email out yeah exactly, it's purely a cold calling stuff, right? Right, I'm not an end-to-end sales guy, right? I still don't know. So I used to only, like you know, dial out um particular uh reach outs, and once they give lead, then I have to uh pass it to, like you know, sales folks, like you, I'm sure, like you're my first sales guy, you remember solution. Why do? Of course, I generally show you. Yeah, right, and you and me still remember the company, right? Uh, ayo, we spoke.
Speaker 2:Yo, yeah, yo yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, la Film School. Yeah, so, like that, like you know, I used to call like randomly to a lot of people. Then I called one guy you know it was. It's a great example for, like, you know, what not to do in this lead and what to do in this lead. Right, I called a guy without even researching. I called Mike Priestman from uh radio shack, right, um, what happens is that day the company got bankrupt. I didn't know that and that guy blasted me like anything and he said, hey, why the hell you call me on the bankrupt today? I just lost my job and all those things. And I was like, oh my god, so it's a pretty, pretty bad example that I call without even doing the research. Right. Then what he told is, like you know, um, okay, you can, you can call me when I land somewhere else and don't call me after this and all those things. I said I apologized as usual. Right, we know about us at the moment we get caught, we'll surrender. As a guy I said, apologize, I never do this. You know, I done that without even knowing that, apologize. Then I went in. Then I used to follow up with him like crazily, like you know what he's doing and all those things.
Speaker 1:I started liking his, all his posts on linkedin and after I still remember, like after six months and 20 days or something, he joined um one you know startup company like some fintech firm and and I immediately liked him and congratulated him and called him in exactly three minutes after he posted that he got a job. And he got pissed off initially. He said hey, why are you calling me now? I said you asked me to call when you land the job. I know you land the job today. I just saw your post. He said I just posted three minutes back. I said that's okay, I saw that I called you because I work at night, completely from india. So he posted out and say like one o'clock indian time.
Speaker 1:Then, um, then I called him and he was like super furious and said you immediately called me. I told him no, I just called and say congratulations and we can, we can reach out after three months or something. Then Then I don't know what he thought. He immediately told me I don't want to wait three months. Okay, he learned about my services and all those things on the cold call itself and said okay, do this. He gave a list of the team that I want to bring for the next level call. Then I thought, okay, he's just escaping from the call. Then he scheduled a follow-up call the following Monday and I took the team and you don't believe like, I signed a deal for like 1.5 million. Wow, exactly Like you know, that was my first big closure in Aspire 1.5 million company called Jet Capital. We built an entire loan origination system platform.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very impressive closure, kapil, and how was the post-closure reception in office in the Smyrna system?
Speaker 1:Oh, that gives me confidence that I am now. Before that I was just thinking I was just a lead generation guy, right, used to schedule meetings and go forward, right, when I listened to all the requirements in the cold call then, um, I still remember but still, like you know, my sales guy helped me in terms of coordinating all the stakeholders at one call and what to do and all those things. I'm sure like, uh, you know, so she'll, the guy worked with me, so he helped me a lot. Uh, he's also one of my mentor, like you, for me, right and um, so he helped me in terms of, like, you know how to coordinate the team. But the one good, great thing is, like, he gave all the responsibilities to me and, hey, you work on this and let me know, like how it works. Right, so I started learning.
Speaker 1:Then, after reception and aspire, like, um, everybody was like okay, he's a insights guy and completely closed the banger. Like million dollar deals from offshore through phone. Then, you don't believe, like Aspire's system, entire lead generation process has changed. They used to look at you know inside sales guy in a very different way and after this closure, like, they gave a lot of responsibilities. You know anyone can close the deals and if your sales guy is okay, you can proceed with all the terms and close the contracts. So entire process has changed in Aspire after this deal.
Speaker 2:Well, I really liked the management of Aspire system as well. They were really good, especially the top management, very down to earth and they always gave that extra leverage to the sales team and they had a huge sales team, both inside sales as well as, uh, you know, the field, yeah, the field sales guy in, uh in on-site and uh, especially the ceo, uh, gaurish and gauri gauri is a man.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he was a you know very down-to-earth person, always there to support you when you're in need uh. So I I also remember very you know correctly, like you know, how things happened in uh aspire system and the post system. You moved it to TVS. And one thing I want to ask about the project what was the project all about? Was it completely a development project or an implementation project?
Speaker 1:Okay, it's a pure scratch development, right, they have to build a loan origination system, a LOS system, right For a small banking finance and all those things. And we started with the development on NET, angular, these kind of ecosystem, and it moved into a data project Because they have humongous amount of data, the data engineering also needed and apart from that, we partnered with SharePoint on the content management and all those things. We kind of put together a bundle and developed that entire system. So we started with development on the content management and all those things. We kind of put together a bundle and, um, uh, developed their entire system there. So all of the development, content management and um, data engineering and we also, like, done a lot of qas for them because you know, we developed the entire journey right and you resigned from aspire system as a head of business development.
Speaker 1:Yep, basically they moved me into individual sales. After that I got assigned to a couple of members. Then I started working. You know about me, when I'm comfortable with some kind of roles, I don't want to be there. Nobody's questioning me and I can easily achieve the target that they gave. Then I thought, okay, this is not the place for me, but I have a huge respect for Asperger. They're the best company so far I have worked and I learned everything from them.
Speaker 2:Right and again TVS. You were the vice president of sales, business development over there, and what was the journey in TVS?
Speaker 1:TVS was purely magic, I can say right, you know, I joined um tbs, rejected microsoft's offer and freshworks offer. Then I joined tbs. I still remember um, freshworks about to offer I had a very detailed discussion with head of sales. I can't think there then, um, then I I was not, like you know, interested in joining freshworks. Then I got a great offer in microsoft and I had a bad. You know I was trying they were hiring for inside sales manager where they need to manage the inside sales team there. Then again, like I don't want to be there. Then, um, then all of a sudden, like I got an offer in TVS next and I gave an interview to them. Then in between I got a couple of offers in ChangeForn and another company called I forget the name some company here in Tidal Park, so a few companies. Then I joined in TVS.
Speaker 1:Tvs was a very different journey, right, and I started as a business development manager and I had gone with already they have a inside sales team and I went there. Then I saw like the process was completely, very different. I still remember like when I joined tbs first, you know one guy I was just asking all the guys you know how many guys done closure out here in my first team meeting and one guy came and said, hey, I closed a couple of deals. I said, okay, what is the deal value? And he, he said $1,500. I thought I really thought, like you know, it's 1.5 million or something. He's talking in a very different numbers. I kept insisting okay, what is the exact deal value you spoke about? He said $1,500. I was like shattered. I said $1,500, okay, because you know. I said, dude, what do you sold? He said, like we done a chatbot for a customer. I said, okay, then this is not good.
Speaker 1:Then I went, done the big research in terms of, like you know, my development team and my CTO and all those guys, and they said, okay, hey, we just transformed, we bought a company and we're just transforming from a legacy to modernized systems and we really like to move into digital transformation. And then I thought, okay, this is starting from scratch job. Then it's very, very, very different journey from first year, but lucky enough to, like you know, close very good deals in the beginning and I think I closed my first deal in 15 days with that tbs. My second deal was around 30 to 40 days and my first day first deal was around, say, 120k. The second deal, it crossed a million dollars I'm getting really jealous, kapil.
Speaker 2:You've been closing all big size deal man. I need to catch up very fast. Anyhow, congratulations, kapil, absolutely. I've been hearing about you like from different sources, like you know, what kapil has achieved in a short span of time. Kapil, and what advice or suggestion you would offer to someone who wants to make that transition from inside sales to field sales. I mean, first of all, did you ever have that thought that, listen, I've been doing cold calling, lead generation, sitting from India. I want to move to field sales, travel to, you know, different parts of the world, have a face-to-face meeting with the client. Was that in your mind at any point of time when you were doing inside sales? And my second question, again, as I asked first, what advice or suggestion would you offer to someone who wants to switch from inside to field sales?
Speaker 1:Exactly the first question I can answer. Suresh, if you ask me, do you have an inspiration to travel around the world and meet the customer in person? Yeah, definitely, that is my biggest aspiration when I started my inside sales. But you know what I do is, when I do inside sales, I never feel.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I'm just an inside sales guy, right, and I always wanted to get control over the prospect at any point of time, like and I want, if you ask me the prospect, I want to know each and every bit of them, right, and I wanted to close the deals, even in phone, without even meeting them. That was my. You can call me arrogant or ego that time. Like you know, I I'm very jealous on my leads, I'm very possessive on my leads and it is very precious for me. Some guy is talking. Like you know, I will keep them safe and make sure. Like you know, I put that in crm and say, hey, this is the guy I'm about. Don't reach out to them because I don't want duplication to happen there. You know the process, which is very big in S3. So I have to be very keen on each and every step, what I'm doing, even on the follow-up call. When I schedule with the prospects, I'll make sure how I follow with my prospect the same time with my sales guys and my delivery team which is coming for the call.
Speaker 1:Right, I was very rigorous in terms of, like you know, pulling these people at different time zones. You know most of the time uh, you know, right, usually as per like most of the time 10, 12. You know after that the delivery team won't come for the call. But what happens is now I learned you know we have to build a relationship internally too when you're selling from india. So I started sell, I started like building very good relationship with all the delivery folks and say this is an important lead. I want you to come after 12 o'clock because one comfortability I give it to my prospect is, like you know, if my prospects say some time, I never postpone, I never change. Even if it's four o'clock or two o'clock midnight in India, I'll make sure all my team are available. So that gave me initial success in Asper because nobody ever done that. Everybody was like they wait for that comfortability of the delivery team and make sure, like you know, the prospect is coming for that call. But it gives me added advantage.
Speaker 1:My most of my prospects come from East coast or Pacific and they they give random time. I never convince them. I make sure I convince internally. That's very easy for me, right? Because, as a sales guy, right, suresh, you cannot sell to the customer just because we're talking good and all those things. You need to have all this additional system as to support you, so you need to sell internally too most of the times, so that helps me selling easily.
Speaker 1:And second thing, is that any advice you know, if you ask me, whoever is like trying to go from inside sales or from field sales, right, they have to live as a field sales guy when they do inside sales. So that's the best advice. They cannot say, like I scheduled a meeting and it's your lead, you're going to talk. I always go and ask my sales guy hey, I scheduled this meeting, this is what happened, can I schedule the follow-up call? Can I continue the rhythm? Right? What happens is you have a one phase for the prospects so they don't get confused, first of all, and they always talk to you and your name is registered and when you move, like after five years or something, to a bigger role, and these are all, like you know, your precious contacts and networks where they can help you close deals very soon absolutely.
Speaker 2:I agree with you a couple, because even I share the same experience, because when we were doing lead generation, when I was doing lead generation as well, yes, uh, the thing is it's very hard to connect with people over the phone. Even if you make some 60, 70 call, you will connect with some four or five people and that person will give an opportunity for the next level meeting and once that happened, you start creating that bond with your lead from day one, even before the sales guy comes in, yeah, and when the sales guy starts throwing tantrum, listen, I'm busy, I can't attend. Or even the technical guy, like you know, we, we get furious. Listen, I've been putting, I've been putting all my effort, like you know, I've been making calls. Listen, you have to make yourself available, otherwise it's going to be very difficult because the next day you don't know, like you know what's going to happen, like you know whether we're going to generate a lead or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very difficult, right, One lead. People say, like you know, one lead is very, very important. If you look at it, you have to make 150 calls to reach five prospects, right, five prospects. You get, you know all the no's and you convert them into a lead. And if this guy is not coming for the call, then absolute banger. You know I go furious. You know I can fight with anyone in the company to make sure you know they can attend the call. And you don't believe, like I escalated even to see you, as most of them I said I want these guys on call and people hate me for that. I don't care. Like you know, we are closing deals and I'm just working for you as a sales guy, right, first of all. And um, if you're not taking and reaping, uh, the fruits and it's very difficult. That's why all Kapil.
Speaker 2:Now I know your role in the current organization has changed. Do you still reach out to prospect or you just manage the team, the sales and marketing team?
Speaker 1:I manage the sales but still, like you know, I have my own leads. You know I cannot live without doing sales. I do cold calling. Still, I reach out to prospects on LinkedIn. I don't believe like like yesterday night also I got a couple of leads through cold calling and linkedin and it's really working out for me so far, because it's just um, you cannot stop that yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
Speaker 2:And being front ending the organization, you have to do that right. You have to reach out to prospect to generate new business for the organization, time and again, non-stop, right, and couple, uh what are the top five technologies, or even three, like you know you use on a day-to-day basis, uh, to generate leads. Or, if I may say, like you know, you cannot do selling, like you know, without these tools and technologies.
Speaker 1:Okay, one is a database right. You know I use lucha. This is really good for me because it gives me a mobile number and it helps me reach out to the prospect very easily. The second thing is LinkedIn LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn is my huge I can say it's my backbone right Through LinkedIn. I still remember like and if you look at my journey so far from 14 years in international selling, linkedin gave me almost around, say, $50 million so far through revenue. So LinkedIn is my huge thing. After all my efforts.
Speaker 1:The first tool I can recommend is LinkedIn. The third thing is you need to have a proper phone system. You know I'm using like Unifed Voice now and it's really good and the phone system is very important. And because you're selling from offshore right, I'm still going and meeting customers. A lot of things are happening. My sales approach has been changed lately in a very different way, but my legacy approach is still there. Like you know, I cannot waste my every night in india when I'm here, so I call them you, I get good database, I connect with them in LinkedIn, then I start calling them. It's a very, very normal process, but how you'll be successful in this is you have to do it aggressively.
Speaker 2:So the top three tools you mentioned was first one is Lucia. That's for creating database as well as you get insight about the potential lead as well as you get insight about uh, the potential lead as well as the organization. So lucia provides uh a great insight compared to any other tool about the company, about an individual as well, and you also get a direct phone numbers. And the second one is sales navigator for connecting as well as for interacting with uh people and having a proper phone system. Yeah, that's very important as well, because you don't want to call someone up and you know sounding pretty bad at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and you know this phone system is very important. Why I keep insisting is because you know the first 30 seconds when we call, right. You know most of the time when you call from India from a normal phone system, right, it will take at least like five seconds glitch to reach them and it's very different kind of conversation. But having a good phone system, like the moment you reach out to them and say, hey, this is Kapil, you know where you're from it completely moved the conversation in a very different way.
Speaker 2:Right, and what is your pitch, kapil? I know you have an office in various parts of the world, even in the United States and India, but what value does you you know, in the first 20 seconds you provide to your customer? How do you go about pitching your?
Speaker 1:services. Okay, basically, right, suresh, you know, right, I'm sure like very similar to you as well. Right, I never pitch my services in cold calling. Right, I typically like call people to introduce myself and, um, also my company. Right, and pretty much, um, it would be very, very, very, very generic pitch where a this is couple, you know, I got connected. I just connect with them on the stories. Right, I got connected here and I know, like you attended, uh, because I might met them in conference, I'm not able to reach out to them. I read I profile, customer variables ratio. That's how the pitch comes in.
Speaker 1:Right, what happens is, whatever I do for the next week, I prepare this Friday. Right, I get around say 50 numbers and I know, like what are the conferences we all attended together or in my company attended together, or my sales folks attended. So I get all the insights and start calling and tell, hey, I was trying to meet here, not able to meet you, I want to introduce myself. So every time my first pitch is all about introducing myself and I tell them, like, I'm calling from India, I will be very honest with them, then I have office here and all those things Love to talk to you. So it's a very generic, you know, request for a time pitch. And I always tell them hey, this is not the right time to talk, because they called you and probably we can schedule a 30 minutes meeting whenever you're comfortable. So the first pitch is all about requesting their time, nothing else.
Speaker 2:Right. So it's not completely a cold call. You know you've done lots of research before you know reaching out to the person and there is a background behind it as well. You've met that person in a conference. Again, when you meet someone in a conference, it's pretty limited because everyone are busy and attending conferences is a huge place man, some 3,000, 4,000 people. When I used to attend Microsoft conferences, the partners, attendees or the people who attend the conference were around 3,000 people. So it's very hard to prospect with each and everybody. So, similarly, I used to prepare myself in terms of you know who are the people who are attending this, who? I used to create a list of database, maybe 50, you know like-minded company? You know with the revenue or the size of the organization. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:And also, you know, suresh, we have intuition right as a sales guy. We know some names and some faces, faces, and we know we can easily close them. And I'm sure you also feel that and that intuition. If I get it, then that guy I call him like every day.
Speaker 2:Right. I also have a similar approach, kapil. For example, when someone I connect on LinkedIn, I don't call them immediately because you get access to their email address as well as a time to direct number or mobile number. So what I do is hey listen, I just recently connected with you on LinkedIn. Don't mind me reaching out to you in this way, but this is the reason I called you, so I don't offer any pitch Again. The purpose is to set up a meeting with him so that we can talk conveniently in detail about what we can offer to him and understand what the challenges he has and whether we can provide any value add to the organization exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:You don't believe this ratio, I don't know. Last time we went to us right, I told you right. You know we went for a road. We scheduled 150 meetings, uh, in 45 days, just following this three-part. Get a number from lucia, connect them in linkedin based on the location that we are going, my teams reach out to them and schedule this meeting. Exactly the way that we work. And 150 meetings huge uh for a five-member sales team right, well, I was.
Speaker 2:I was about to ask the next question because last time, when I met you and I visited your office, you said you're planning for a road trip in the united states. So how was it? I mean 150 meeting, and what was the span of, what was the duration?
Speaker 1:Exactly. So this is the second level of sales approach that we took over, right, you know, typically what we do is you know we do cold calling, lead generation, all those things. Now we have, you know, liberty to travel because it's our own company. So what we do is, you know, we kind of travel to all the places. We.
Speaker 1:We plan it like we take a car from new york okay, from new york, you know we started like on the way cities like the tech hubs and we meet five customer every day in a coffee shop. You know we most of the time they invite offers a coffee shop nearby so it always go into an offline and good conversation with prospects. You know it will. It's purely never pitching sales kind of stuff. You know we just go meet them and greet, say how things are happening and industry trends. Pretty much we only talk about trends and technologies. At some point, like you know, something will connect and we started selling about business and we talk business. Conversation 150 was really amazing, you know we completed it any conversion from that yep, we got um couple of fortune 500 deals.
Speaker 1:You know, just like that. I know, I'm sure, like you, the procurement doesn't. Everything is very hard. We found a niche, um a pain point for, uh, two fortune 500 companies I don't want to name it now because the contract is going on now two great companies. You know they have a two different pain points where we can easily cater those pain point for them as a solution. And we got it. We signed a deal before you and we come here congratulations, kapil.
Speaker 2:I wish you more success. And, kapil, you're very active on LinkedIn. You know. Every now and then, like you know, I see your posts You're also doing, you know, sales masterclass. I see that like an unlocking sales success. Tell us more about that. A masterclass with Kapil. I think I should join that session as well. Send me the link. No, no, no, you are. That's okay, kapil. I would like to know, like you know, what you're talking about. I see that. A masterclass with Kapil Dev. What Nodla, infotech and Suresh, what's this all about?
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, there is a because you don't believe. Now, sales Usually, like, what happens is only you can see, tech conference happens, right, tech conference, um, tech events, you know, talking about new trends, technologies and all those things, right, and what happens is off late. You know, everybody realized sales is very important and founder-led sales is super, super important situation right nowadays. And um, so what we thought, you know, um, there is um indo, I'm sure you know madhya pradesh, there is a community called Indoor Sales Community and Super Sourcing is a company, right, they really wanted to expand this because I took a session for them in Draper University in San Francisco For the SaaS Bhoomi folks. You know, where a lot of founders are there. They don't know how to penetrate the US market. Then I was just like randomly taking some roundtable conference talks for them. Then they really interested in terms of like you know, doing this master class with me and all those things. Then the first session was really really successful in indoor.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm still most of the guys you know, never understand the basics of sales and they've been like selling that, right, you know. Then they started grabbing all these points right, startup. They don't even know, like, whether they can call us guys the mobile numbers and it's very, very different kind of like. You know I open up for me how people are so behind in terms of sales and all those things from india. Then I started teaching all the basics, whatever we done so far. So you know, I'm sure like I took a lot of inspiration from you as well. I you still remember, like adam dennis, we closed the deal together, yeah and so how it came right it's.
Speaker 1:It's a quite a journey, right, and it started with cold calling and started with reaching out to him every day. So the basics of uh sales, and I'm teaching them not like a powerpoint presentation or something like that right, and I asked them to keep the notepad and pencil ready and they have to write each and every point. The only thing is everybody knows what they wanted to do. The only problem is they're not doing it and I'll keep insisting them and I will. I will tell them like what, what they have to do exactly in sales masterclass, starting from generation of the phone number till you close the deals, sending the proposals right and um.
Speaker 1:The problem is they never profile the customer. Uh, they get. They always talk about gtm. Gtm is the word very big, right, it's got to market. It's a huge word. You know you build a product and you go sell it to everyone. You cannot sell. You have to shrink the gtm and find out, like, who's the right audience for you, right? You have to do a lot of research on that and making sure how to shrink your GTM in your handful of leads and close them first. So that is what I'm teaching there.
Speaker 2:It sounds good, kapil and Kapil, you've done excellent sales all your career. But what inspired you to pursue a career in sales? Why not anything else?
Speaker 1:Okay, very honest answer. I can say yeah, please. Okay, I'm not an engineering guy. First of all, you know about me and my education is completely different.
Speaker 2:I failed in my 10th standard and 12th standard, and whenever I think of You're jogging my memory now, like you know, when I have to mention that I've been a very bad in academy yeah, that's how that's a dna. But one one thing is like you know I I failed before you, like I failed in fifth standard, yeah, so I'm still leading in that.
Speaker 1:You always my leads yeah I'm leading in that front at least. Yeah, good, exactly. So what happens is? You know, it ignites my ego Like I cannot work in a big IT company right Right.
Speaker 1:When you don't have a proper qualification, right, you know you need to have so much of a percentage and all those things. Then it tells me, like you know, keep getting me in sales because you know it gives me easy access for the top level companies, right, and sales, because you know it gives me easy access for the top level companies, right. And second thing is incentive right and you know right, uh, you saw me, right, I used to go by, yeah bus.
Speaker 2:now I have like now audi you drive a massive. What do you call it?
Speaker 1:suv, yeah, yes, so. So it gives me like amazing, um, like financial, uh stability for me. Uh, right, you close deals, you know, as one or 2% it's close. 1 million, 1% is amazing money where your family is settled right. You know you have to look after your family as well at some point. You know that they're very safe and I have all the liberty to like an open and try any options in my world to explore more sales.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. On the role as a co-founder of CMSO and InfoSign and Entrance Technology. What motivated you to co-found InfoSign and Entrance Technology?
Speaker 1:I done like sales and I just don't. I just don't do sales Right. You know basically what happens is you know when my role was getting bigger so I just finished the sales. Then I started hiring engineering folks for the same projects. You know I'll be like in every interviews and see, like which guy can be suitable for this project, because I think very personalized, when I close some deals, I always go and I talk to them, find the customer. You know where I also talk with all the recruitment team and find out which guy can be in this project. So so it teach me, like you know, the end to end process of how the company work. Even I take care of the invoices, where when I send invoices to my customer, I take care of the collections and everything. So it gives me like an entire spectrum of like how the business runs.
Speaker 1:And the co-founding journey is very different because you know I was about to join or, like you know, start something small. Then I have to thankful very big thanks to Jagan, who's my founder and CEO, jagan Selvaraj, and he's a serial entrepreneur, right. So when I had a conversation with him in offline and he said a couple why you're going and starting something somewhere, you know, probably like we, we just started a company. Why can't you co-found this? Right, and I big thanks to jagan, adi, arun, joel, right, you know, these four guys started in trans, you know, and invited me as a co-founder and say why can't we do this?
Speaker 1:But they are all great technical folks and financial folks and all those things, but the missing piece is sales. When I said I'm coming out and they gave me a good opportunity. But after you become a co-founder, it's completely different. When I was a sales guy, my responsibility is all about, hey, I have to take care of the customer and I have to win projects, take care of your incentive and all those things. But being a co-founder it's a very difficult journey and the responsibility is very high. And in four years we transformed the company into a 450 member company from zero. So it's a huge, massive ramp up, but still a lot of responsibility on our shoulders.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely, and Kapil, I would like to talk to the technical folk from your organization. What I'm doing different in this season is, once I talk to the salesperson, I want to interact with the technical person who is delivering the product. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'd like to have a word with yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think next, you know, maybe next week I'll plan something accordingly.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I can make sure. Like you know, they are available for this because you know this is a very interactive session, you know, I'm sure, super technical and super business oriented too. So they give you a lot of inputs on how they approach the problem statement on the technical side for the customer, where they enable the business aspects as well. So it's really a great session, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely, because I really want to know the kind of delivery happens from offshore, because the listener who are listening to this podcast or this session, be it locally or internationally, they want to know how your organization delivers projects. Time and again, some of the complex projects you have executed from India to overseas clients- Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:We can do that.
Speaker 2:And Kapil, as you said, being a co-founder comes with additional responsibility because, being a sales guy, you're an individual as well as you're managing a team, so your only job is to face the customer. And once a project gets executed, like you know I mean once a project starts you give it to the technical team. But now, as a co-founder and chief marketing sales officer, how has things changed? Like you know, what are the additional responsibility you're taking over?
Speaker 1:Right, you know, the one additional responsibility we're taking over is culture. For our company, we're setting a culture called customer delight and also employee delight. Customer delight, basically, like any customer you need, you need to make sure they're very happy with you. You have to be super, reachable at any point of time for them to make sure, like you know, they're very happy with you. Right, you have to be super, uh, super, you know, reachable for any point of time for them to make sure, like you know they, they attain their goals and the employee friendly culture. Right, you know, um, we have very flat hierarchy and, in fact, like uh, we also have um um sessions where, you know, any of the founders has to be in lunch with all the employees every day. Right, we have to sit and eat together, we discuss ideas, we share, like you know, pain, everything. So, uh, the culture is very important.
Speaker 1:I'm taking care of the people in a very different way because just four guys left so far from entrance till now. If you look at it, uh, the attrition and retention is completely different than entrance so far. And, uh, we, uh, we built a very flat culture where only the happiness has to be there, not, like you know anyone wants to come to our company, they should be super happy, not just an employee, right? Any guest or any customer, anyone who's coming into our organization should go, wow. So that is the culture we're building.
Speaker 1:It's it's. It's a different, quite journey with, you know, interacting with all the engineers that we have and the management team and the support staff and the security professionals and everything. So everybody has to be in the same alignment and we also like create, think like a ceo, kind of what do you say? That? That's a theme, right? Everybody in my company thinks like a CEO, right? What if you are in this, if the CEO is not in there, you are in that situation. What do you do? So everybody has to come up with kind of answers and make sure they follow the same thing.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's more like giving complete access to the employees, to the management?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely right and you know right most of the offshore companies. They never expose engineers to the customers. Much correct and uh, we are not like that. You know, if my customer wants to talk personally to the engineers, they can talk and if they want to hire them permanently with their us office or uk or australian office and they're ready to hire them and we never stopped anyone so far. In fact, we gave almost 10 guys direct hire to our customers. We never charged them. So that gives more advantage for us to run in the front.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that also provides a value add to your organization as well, because I'm sure someone in the US or a company who've been working with you guys hiring a resource directly to their payroll so that kind of services, quality resources you guys have provided in that particular project for him to hire directly that resource to you know on his project.
Speaker 1:Perfect, yeah, exactly, you know that's a different approach that we took. Perfect, yeah, exactly right, you know that's a different approach that we took, but you know it gives us a lot of advantage. Why? Because the guys will go and join right and they become a project managers and they become a customer, right so you're basically you're employing spy, you're installing spy in your client space.
Speaker 2:Whenever there is any new initiative, please let us know I'll be there.
Speaker 1:But what happens is you know anything, you do, suresh. You know in this journey, right, you have to do very genuinely. You don't expect anything out of it. It'll give you more success.
Speaker 2:Don't take it seriously. That was a joke, Kapil.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just saying Because some people tried it the same thing, but they failed. Why? Because they done it very artificially. They project the guys and hey, you can take him, you can take him. Customer has to come and say, hey, I'm talking with Kapil, I'm talking with Suresh, why can't I have him? Right? That kind of expectation gives us luck and it comes only through when you build a happy culture inside your organization for your employees. They have to come in very candidly, tell the day this customer wants me directly. They cannot go back and do all the things slyly, that's it all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Basically an undercover agent employed by Kapil on a spade. Yeah, so the guy who's working over there gets two, you know two, what do you call it? Two salary, one from the client and one from Kapil.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. What do you call it?
Speaker 2:two salaries, one from the client and one from Kapil, absolutely, but two salaries is too much for them. On a serious note, what value does your organization provide to international clients? The reason I'm asking this is there are so many companies now you know selling offshore services and multiple technologies, be it Microsoft or Fullstack Development, sage or Odoo. You know SAP. What does your organization do something different If you can point out three things to your clients?
Speaker 1:Okay, one thing is attention to the details. The first thing is attention to detail. Any customer which comes to us has their end customer, correct, be it enterprise or be it ISVs, we approach the problem not just for the customer's sake. We approach the problem, you know, we understand in our first discussion, we always understand what is their customer and what is their pain point, what is their roi and all those things. So we always go customers, customer, uh target, right, we just don't, like you know, work for this guy if that his customer is happy. By the way, that, you know, we do the development and the transformation and I'm sure, like you know, it gives more success for us because they get their ROI First thing.
Speaker 1:The second thing is, and we are super flexible, right, you know, being in India, we never say we work only on this time zones, we only work on this one. We have an amazing this time zones, we only work on this one. We have an amazing flexible office hours and we also have a very premium office hours for our customers, office space for our customers, for our employees, right, they can work at any point of time, anywhere. We offer workation, they can go to work a lot, they can go to some beach station, they can go to some destination and work for the customer, right. So flexible hours will definitely, like you know, take you to somewhere else. Because, uh, why a lot of near shore recently success in, like mexico, argentina, brazil, peru, chile? Right, because you know they are all working in the same time zone. They talk the same language.
Speaker 1:And the third thing in our company is communication. Anyone in my company they have to speak amazing English, not just in English. They have to convey the message very clearly. Communication is conveying the message very clearly and any bad things happen, it will go to the customer first, no matter what. If we failed on timeline, if you failed on some kind of hiccup, it has to go immediately, before even a customer comes, and find out. That will give you somewhere a huge additional advantage than the rest of the others. If you follow these three things attention to detail, finding out what does your customer's customer need. The second thing is flexible hours. The third thing is convey the message very clearly and build a very personalized relationship with your customer. Any engineers in my company knows their customer, their family, where they're from, and my customer knows each and every engineers and their family. You don't believe? Like any other customer, any of my employee goes on maternity. The customer will send the gifts directly to their house. I don't hear that you have to create this ecosystem for them.
Speaker 2:You're provoking me, kapil, now to join your company, the kind of things you mentioned.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you, Kapil, because when I interact with people, some of the reason uh organization still haven't chosen an offshore partner I mean it's an added advantage to them, uh, in terms of managing the project, because of the cost, as well as, uh, the availability of resources and different skill set is because of communication.
Speaker 2:And when I say in communication you don't have to be extremely good, uh, commander, with the language, at least convey the message like know what you're trying to say in terms of your work, in terms of what are the challenges you're facing in executing that work. I think that is very, very critical, because I remember still, one of the guys, like you know, asked me the same question Listen, what value does your organization provide compared to other companies? I have to mention the same thing, listen, flexibility of hours. The reason being we have some clients in Australia and I always tell them listen, I can make my guy work overlapping your time zone, exactly, and that applies in the UK. We have an advantage we don't have to make any changes just for five hours, but the same thing applies in the US as well. Listen, I'll help my guy.
Speaker 1:I mean applies in the us as well. Listen, I'll help my guy. I mean I'll help you. Uh, my guy will work overlapping your time zone, for example, covering est time zone, and for us, yeah, we cover est to till two o'clock sometime. You know a few, because I still remember like few guys cover even till like two pst for my because it's out of their own interest. I never force them to right, I always tell them what customer needs and these guys build an amazing relationship and they're learning a lot. Um, this helps us a lot. So you know, we get a lot of um information about, like no, I start up with two, three developers with the customer and it will grow for me like to 10, 15 easily, with uh flexible hours that we give it to them and who are your customers?
Speaker 2:any specific industry, as well as geographic location. Your team targets.
Speaker 1:Pretty much you know. Right now we are focusing on US, a little bit on UK and India, right, and I can say 90% into US, and my customers are like big enterprises and ISVs, independent software vendors.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a great journey, kapil, and I wish your company all the best, absolutely. I hope you guys close more deals. Yep, yeah, and Kapil, away from the sales topic. You've been called as a green man of Chennai.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us more about your environmental initiatives and how that thing started. Okay, that thing started from my childhood, you know, along with my grandpa, I guess I mean, just to add to that and just for our audience, couple has been uh, what do you call that? Planting trees, and he has created some record. I think that's the reason. Like you know, he's been called the green man of chennai okay, thank you, I think you've done a proper research before.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. And so what happens is you started with my grandpa. We used to plant trees, you know, in our streets and in our football grounds, right, and so you always take me, like, what we do is, you know, whenever we eat the seasonal fruit, like mangoes and all those things, he asked me to keep the seed safe. He asked me to, like you know, put it in a some box or something and one week it will come, the sprouts comes up, right, you know we go every sunday, uh, with a bucket full of, uh, sprouted seeds and, like you know, he wants me to plant the trees. You know he dig and I have to help him and planting and all those things. So we do this in our hometown in chennai, uh, the suburbs, and we started, but we're not able to do the large scale.
Speaker 1:But I moved into college, you know, right, you know fun, and when I start working, you know it's all responsibility. I lost it. But all of a sudden, like after the massive this chalika to things and happening in Chennai, so I gave a couple of speech in beach, you know, I found a huge community following me after that, then after that, then after that, I made made sure, like you know, use of the community and started plantation every week, every sunday. Nearby you know a lot of schools and colleges and football grounds. I chose football because I play soccer and football and so I used to like take care of and adopt those kind of grounds and start planting trees with the help of a lot of volunteers.
Speaker 1:Then we recovered a lot of lakes. You know poru corotur and now we are doing pulal and we're taking care of. You know all the chennai's lakes and lake beds. You know we plant more trees like palm trees and native. You know pungai trees, neem trees and all those things and we also have um, what do you say? A request like if anyone wants to plant in chennai and they can call me and say this sunday, we love to plant, can you come and plant me in my house? We do that. So we go to their house and we found a place. You know anyone who take care of the uh trees. You know we give gifts like medals if the kids are taking care of they. We named the tree after them and we giving medals for them right so.
Speaker 2:So not only you are doing it, you also created a community where you also help people in in the plantation activities exactly it's called live for others.
Speaker 1:It's not actually a ngo because I don't want any funds and all those things rolling around over there. It's just a community where you know if somebody is very much interested in doing social work for environment, they can buy their own trees and come and join with us every sunday, right. And um, if, if they're, if they have money to donate and I never get money from anyone I always tell like directly pay to the nurseries, okay, and get the trees and then in the in the name of you, then we, we get, we collect the trees, right. And second thing is uh, sometime, like you know, they say I got 100 trees this week but, um, I got around, say, 150 volunteers. Some guys will come and buy, buy us food in the morning. The breakfast will be served for free.
Speaker 1:So I never get money from anyone because I don't want to go into this funding and all those things. And and I always tell them hey, social work is very different and environmental social work is completely different. You need to have a passion for that. You love trees, come and plant it. Don't give money to make plants of what you have. I don't think anyone is busy for planting one tree in every week. It's very easy. If you and me are not busy, I'm sure, like you know, anybody can do it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's much needed for our society, especially for Chennai as well at this moment of time. It's a great initiative. Kapil, I wish you good luck in that as well. Apart from your business, what you're doing and how do you maintain a work-life balance with such a demanding career and your environmental activism?
Speaker 1:okay, work-life balance, you know, um it's. It's initially like I was struggling but, you know, after that I found, you know, family life is very important, how, exactly, like you know what we focusing on our sales and all those things. So, the business time you know, I always keep my time for my family, right, no, weekends, it's purely for family, uh, correct, and uh, even in a in a days, right every day. Uh, we, coffee time with my family. I go home like nine o'clock or something and spend, spend some good time with my kids for till like 10 o'clock sometimes. If they they slept early, I'll leave them. But, you know, with my partner, my wife, I know I always have a coffee time like at least like one, 1.5 hours. We just talk, we spend, we talk without even any gadgets, you know, we just keep talking. Then we go to bed and we, I start working again.
Speaker 1:Right, the work-life balance is very, very important. You, the one thing is you have to spend good time with your family. But also on the health side, right, I play soccer regularly, I, I work out, I run in the morning, I sleep sometime. I sure, like you know, it's not good and I sleep very less hours, like five, six hours. But you know, when you do a regular food, diet, exercise, you know it will definitely keep you in the right place and you should be in a good, healthy food system. Don't take, you know, a lot of crap foods please.
Speaker 2:True, don't, don't take, you know, a lot of craft foods, please. True, agree a couple. And can you share any future goals or projects you're particularly excited about, uh in the organization or uh even in your personal life?
Speaker 1:organization. You know, you know, uh, we, we found infisign is a groundbreaking uh product, right it's. I am like we're competing with uh big ecosystems like Okta, ping, sailpoint. The one great advantage and goal is there is a lot of projects for identity world, identity management, governance, privilege access management, creating passwordless and all those things. You have to have different products to achieve all those things, but we built one product to achieve everything at one shot, right, so that's our biggest goal. It's a little hiccup in the initially, but we start picking up. We got 25 plus customer right now, um, including a big customers like fortune 500, so, um, so that's our goal. I'm sure, like uh, we'll be a great OIM company in a couple of years, for sure.
Speaker 2:Fantastic Kapil. It was a pleasure talking to you. I hope our listener gets to learn a lot from you, whatever you've shared so far. Once again, thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy schedule and joining our podcast today.
Speaker 1:Before we sign off, I can tell one thing we're listening to the podcast, right, and, uh, you can. You can apply it at any point of time, right, I follow these three things very rigorously, okay, you can apply it for your sales, you can apply it for life and you can apply it for any kind of work you do, right. So what I do, sir ish, is, first, three things is one thing is I help everyone. Uh, every day, okay, at least one guy, right, you have to help one guy, someone every day, right, without even expecting anything as a result, right. Second thing I follow is I learn one new thing every day, right, no matter what. And third thing is whatever I do it, I do it 100, right, I? I don't do off-minded stuff, I don't do like 98, I don't do 99, I really want to do 100 if I, if I. If it's not, I don't do it right.
Speaker 1:So what happens is these three things is, when you start doing this, you help someone, right. So you create a big network, at least in 365. You know 365 new people where you help them and they are a new network. That network will take you somewhere else. The second thing is you learn one new thing. It will be a dictionary like in a year, if you look at it, you learn 365 new things. It's very different and it will be like big, helpful things for you in the future.
Speaker 1:The third thing is when you do 100% every day, like starting from your coffee, for example, before you, when you start this right, how you prepare this meeting, you meditate and you follow through me. We connect before this podcast, 15 minutes before, and find out like you know how we talk and all those things. So that kind of 100% preparation is really helpful. When you start doing this as a habit, it will take you somewhere else. I'm telling you. So follow these three things and apply it in your day-to-day life, no matter whether it's your work or your life or personal stuff, and it will take you in a very different level reach.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, kap and and guys, you're listening to someone who started as a uh, inside sales guy, uh to a million dollar right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not inside sales guy. You know my first job. My interest really started. My first job is chennai roads.
Speaker 2:I used to give pamphlet right, right right and uh, credit card sales guy who give pamphlet in the road and move this absolutely, and being a co-founder of an organization, uh, you know, his journey has been phenomenal. Guys, I've seen couple, I've known him personally. He's a very down-to-earth person and, uh, the thing about, the thing I like about couple is, uh, his passion for selling. He's someone, like you know, will never give up continuously. Like you know, as he said during the conversation, he makes around 100 to 150 calls when he started his career and he still makes that effort to reach out to the audience. That's amazing, and I wish you all the success in life going forward as well. Once again, thank you so much thank you so much today.
Speaker 1:You know it's my pleasure to meet you because you were my mentor. You're still my mentor on a lot of things. You keep inspiring me. One secret, you know you're the first guy who took my first qualified lead. I still remember. Thank you so much. It starts there. Everything starts there. Thanks, man, appreciate it. Thank you, take care, kapil, we'll talk soon. Thank you, suresh. We'll meet you soon. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 2:And that's a wrap for today's episode. A big thanks to our guest and to you for tuning in. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us bring more awesome episode. For more update, visit our website at onsite and offshorecom and do follow us on social media. Stay tuned for more exciting content in the coming weeks. Until next time this is signing off, take care and keep thriving in your offshoring journey.
