The extraordinary journey of a 3-time entrepreneur

From Pigeons, to Food to User Retention - A journey of tinkering,
grit and innovation.


Anand Jain is a serial entrepreneur, who started his
entrepreneurial journey as a 16 year old in college by fixing
computers and selling softwares to lawyers. In this episode he
talks about his upbringing, early ventures, and his current
startup CleverTap. 


CleverTap is a user retention platform that helps companies
retain users for life, with clients like Jio, Times Group,
Swiggy, PayTM, and Dream 11. 


Patented Database Technology 


50 petabytes of data currently stored by CleverTap 


DIY approach in his early college years, learning to repair
electrical and electronic appliances in his neighbourhood.
Bicycling to the ISRO’s computer lab in his 10th grade in the
early 90s to interact with computers and spend the whole night
programming. 


Side Hustle during college; 


Selling software to advocates when he was 16 years old in floppy
drives. 


Having a roofing startup that helped the problem of pigeons in
cities. 


Database that runs on user actions or verbs 


Key Takeaways: 


2:16 - What is CleverTap?


3:57 - Which companies use CleverTap? 


6:22 - CleverTap’s USPs and why companies prefer using CleverTap
over building the feature natively


11:32 - Suresh and Anand find out that they have similar origin
stories 


14:22 - Anand’s early years in school and college 


20:53 - Side hustles in college at 16


24:37 - Learning by doing 


26:55 - Early days of customer acquisition 


31:23 - Data comes before Analytics


33:33 - Dealing with variations in data types for various clients


38:39 - Learnings of a third time entrepreneur 


47:48 - Defining the ideal customer


50:57 - People hate outbound calls. How to crack this
problem? 


55:01 - Dealing with international markets


57:19 - Acquisitions 


1:08:15 - Organizational Structure


1:25:30 - ABM at CleverTap


1:35:55 - Culture


Happy listening!