The London Bridge that held everyone together - Kovai's journey

Saravana Kumar, the founder of Kovai.co is a techie, a marketer
who was ahead of the curve, a and maverick salesperson.Even
during his early career, he has done the unthinkable of switching
from a product company like Microsoft to consulting company like
Accenture. 


While at Accenture, he continued working with Microsoft products,
he spotted gaps that left enterprise clients in the lurch. The
techie and entrepreneur in Saravana Kumar built a product to
address the challenge and managed to sell it to an enterprise
market successfully. All this while working part-time for
Fidelity International and moonlighting on his idea during 2
weekdays and the weekend. 


During the initial days of Kovai.co, Saravana Kumar was able to
win 30 enterprise clients clocking in $300k in revenues. Saravana
Kumar also had the sales and marketing acumen that made him run
content marketing when the term itself was known only to a
handful.


He built an audience for his idea by writing 600+ articles about
the Microsoft BizTalk server which created the initial buzz and
demand for the product even before it its launch. This also led
to Microsoft recognizing him as the ‘Most Valuable Professional’
in BizTalk Server, a credential he has held for the past 15
years.


To further build the sales pipeline, he also attended user group
events across Europe and succeeded at winning at least 10 leads
from every event. 


As a SaaS brand’s leader, Saravana Kumar is also adept at doling
out deals that others cannot refuse. A skill that came in handy
in building a leadership team consisting of ex-Microsoft
employees among many others. 


Tune into our latest episode where Saravana retraces Kovai.co’s
journey from being a one-person company to a multi-product SaaS
company that is now 250+ people strong.
Key take aways:

02:13 - Introduction/Who is Saravana Kumar?


03:18 - The birth of BizTalk360, the first product


04:09 - From London to Kovai (Coimbatore)


04:52 - I see. I solve. I sell.


07:04 - Leaving Microsoft for a red carpet welcome at Accenture


16.56 - Building an audience before the product


19:23 -Nuances of  pricing a SaaS product


24:56 - The two ingredients that helped couture the enterprise
market (blog and events)


29:03 - Tracing the growth journey from $100k to $8 Million


34:42 -Giving a Microsoft guy a deal he could not refuse


36:06 - A Founder's Mindset ingrained since childhood


41:47 - Coping with the challenges of a multi-product strategy


47:34 - The biggest cost in building a software company


49:19 - Acquisitions to fuel business growth


52:46 - Building leadership talent from past network


58:45 - The Culture DNA of Kovai.co


1:02:03 - Kovai.co - The story behind the name


1:02:34 -  Kovai Connect - A program to nurture young talent


01:03:08 - The next 5-10 years for Kovai


Key mentions
16:42 - Sarvana Kumar wins recognition for exceptional
community leadership - The Microsoft Most Valuable
Professional Walking buddy becomes the new COO for Kovai.co -
SaaS firm Kovai.co appoints Andrew Cloke as new COO1:07:10 Saravana
Kumar featured on the cover of the Latka SaaS magazineMicrosoftIIT
Madras Stanford University AccentureNational Health
Service Fidelity International Biztalk360Serverless360 Andrew Cloke