Sakshi and Ashish Tulsian share their playbook for surviving the pandemic with hope and compassion

By Pankaj Mishra


"These are not days for unbridled optimism, but this is the
perfect time to allow hope to arise in our spirits.” 


Donald T Iannone


Entrepreneurial optimism can be dangerous and suicidal.
Overconfidence and confirmation biases can blind founders from
getting a realistic assessment of any situation. But the undying
sense of chasing the glimmer can also be inspiring, and perhaps
the single biggest source of strength for surviving an
existential crisis like the ongoing pandemic. 


When the first wave of Covid pandemic hit India in early March
this year, Sakshi and Ashish Tulsian, the husband-wife duo and
founders of POSist, thought things would return to normal soon.
They announced work-from-home starting 14th March thinking it
would last for a week at the most. 


Sakshi still remembers different signals leading up to the
deadlock, starting February this year, all in the hindsight
though. 


“I remember we were doing a deal in Indonesia during
January/February, which was the single biggest contract for us
and it was going well. We signed the contract .End of february is
when we started experiencing delays in getting the money.
Similarly, we started seeing delays in closing the deals in the
Middle East,” she tells me in this podcast. 


Looking back, from the end of February to the first two weeks of
March, many deals POSist sales team was working on for the past
two quarters did not close. 


“On March 3, we witnessed the second signal when an annual event
we have been participating in for the past six years in Delhi
with hectic schedules, appeared to be going empty. We used to
collect around 250 leads daily over the past few years, and this
year we were barely managing around 22 leads on a daily basis.”


We receive money everyday. Revenues hit our bank account
everyday. Our forecast to reality differential isn’t very high,
normally. I remember the March 18 announcement of “Janata
Curfew.” And we saw revenue zero from that day till April
15. 


Ashish also remembers a call from Aneesh Reddy, the founder CEO
of Capillary and a fellow SaaS entrepreneur, around that time.


“How’s it going?” Aneesh asked. “How bad do you think this is
going to be?”


“Probably a quarter?” Ashish remembers telling Aneesh


“And Aneesh was like, dude, you need help.”


“You will not have time to react if you don’t overreact now,”
Aneesh told him. “Start planning for zero revenues.” 


Since then, Sakshi and Ashish braced themselves for the worst.
POSist used to do around Rs. 40 crore worth of billing daily
before the pandemic hit. “By April, we were looking at less than
a crore everyday,” says Ashish. 


“We can’t thank him (Aneesh) enough for this,” says Sakshi. 


Since then, Sakshi and Ashish had to lay off their staff, cut all
expenses, and live with zero revenues. 


Listen to this podcast to learn more about how the POSist
founders regained growth, tapped markets, changed their revenue
mix and of course, also hired back the staff they had to let
go.