Agile CRM (Customer relationship management), the brainchild of a BITS Pilani alumni Manohar Chapalamadugu is a SaaS-based sales and a marketing suite for small businesses. It may not have the budget of a Fortune 500 company, but certainly has a platform of similar quality to compete with them. ClickDesk, a support product was what they started with and realised the need of building a bridge for several aspects including sales and marketing.
Manohar’s desire to work in multiple startups after his graduation fuelled his dream to start a product-based company, unlike the many service-specific firms across the country. “I was fortunate to have worked in startups that had a strong vision. I was sure to come up with my own idea and sell it to people rather than sitting and writing codes for hours,” he says.
With that first-hand knowledge of knowing the right atmosphere that motivates people to give their best, he knew it was a collective effort that would help a firm grow. For a two-year old company, the start was slow, but the growth was promising, from supporting 5 businesses a day to a 100 of them now. As the name of the firm, Agile, says, they adapt well with time. Their mantra behind pitching themselves right in the market lies in their analysis of behaviour-specific interactions with customers. “If one user spends more time on a page than the other, we may have a recommendation in accordance to that,” Manohar clarifies.
The growth trajectory of firms being in tune with innovations and latest technologies, he says, is something that will throw hints at you. “There will be cases where you would need to trust your gut feeling. You’d have to come up with custom fields in your software. When there’s flexibility, things shall follow suit soon,” the man, who’d done his masters at State University of New York, opines. That’s why he says, entrepreneurs must ensure that technology brings repeatable business, where customers are able to get back and the evaluation of the product is done from time to time. He’s all smiles while talking about the promising start-up scene in the country. “More than 4000 companies have emerged in the last year,” he states as a fact.
