Transcript: Manik Mehta: Founder of Omnify, a global SaaS platform for small and medium service business

Host: Hey Manik, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. So I want to start our conversation with for the audiences who don't know about Omnify, what is Omnify?

Guest: Sure, pleasure to be here Natraj and happy to obviously share our journey as well. Uh to start with, Omnify today we are a what we call a service e-commerce platform, right?

So we work with service businesses across especially in recreation, sports, fitness, activity segment. And uh basically what Shopify does for uh product e-commerce, right? We do something similar for service e-commerce.

So help them sell their services online. Uh with that manage their scheduling, customers, uh all their internal communication all in one place.

Host: Uh so is it fit to say it's a CRM system for service businesses?

Guest: Yeah, so um we uh you know, uh what we saw as a problem was that um softwares have been put into the these categories, right? And of course, softwares started as a vertical uh solution, right? for enterprises.

So it made sense or it came from its predecessors of uh ERPs, right? So Yeah, yeah. So but for small businesses generally the challenges is that, you know, CRM is one thing that you need, right? So fundamentally as a small business, what do you need?

You need a CRM, right? to manage your customer data. You need uh today uh with that what you need is a digital interface that your customers expect to interact with, right? for every business. What we call the uh Uberification of of services, right?

So what Uber did was uh people don't want to call for a cab, right? And and you just press a button to to get a service that you need and it's sort of trickling down into other services.

And uh uh and what we saw was every business more or less is shifting having their whether it's a website or a mobile app, a way for their customers to interact whether it's buying the services, booking the services or just managing uh, you know, their accounts with the business.

Right? So that that digital interface becomes a critical piece uh between the uh business and the customer, right? Uh so your CRM, your digital interface.

So with that you need payment gateway, you need uh, you know, so your your all your customer data, uh all your business workflows uh on the back end, everything uh sort of need to be aligned, right?

So we we look at our software as more of a platform for these businesses to uh you know, instead of getting five different software, trying to figure out how do you uh patch it together, make a workflow.

We built a whole software that goes from your uh, you know, back end to your customers how they interact, right? So CRM is a part of it.

Um on top of that you get your uh you know, your websites run on us, your uh booking system, payments, um you know, literally your your staff schedules, everything is is uh runs on Omnify.

Host: So uh who's your primary customer uh like uh who's your core customer that you are currently targeting towards?

Guest: So um so over the years, you know, because what we are really building uh goes across a lot of segments.

Uh definitely if you look at within within this uh you know, services space, uh you know, fitness would be uh one of the uh segments where they there are enough uh softwares, right? Or maybe wellness as well like spas and stuff.

They're still SAS solutions out there. But they're like literally 100 other categories that do not have a software built for their category, right? So um but um interestingly, a lot of them have similar problems, right?

So uh for all scheduling is a problem, right? Uh and and selling online means you you can't sell what you can't schedule, right? scheduling is like your inventory. Right? So without inventory management, how do you sell online?

So um so this your selling scheduling and customer communication needs to work together. Right that's how uh your whole workflow would would literally work, right?

And and so we bring that together and uh and it's flexible and configurable enough for you to set it up the way you run your business. So right?

And and what we've seen especially when it comes to small businesses is it's it doesn't have a format, right?

So you have uh uh you can have same businesses operating very differently uh while different businesses in different categories who operate very similarly, right? So so how do you cater to that, right?

So if we go only category specific then we eventually uh you know, we we end up building another solution for the larger categories, right? where it's more consolidated. But that there are already solutions for that, right?

But within that segment like fitness and wellness also there the smaller uh new age businesses gets left out because they're in their model doesn't fit into the fitness uh you know, traditional model. Right? So uh so those kind of things.

So what how we look at our category is more of uh we have a few use cases on how you can sell, how you can schedule, right?

As long as you fit into that, it works for us. you can leverage our software well, right? saying that uh today with the with the kind of feature set that we have, uh I I would probably say um some of the categories that work really well for us is uh recreation, uh sports coaching uh and um uh fitness, of course.

Um with with that uh we also um within and recreation is a big space, right? So within recreation, we work from uh you know, small kids activity businesses to um um all the way to uh recreation departments of of a few cities, right?

Uh for their rec centers.

So, so it's still wide enough from a customer standpoint from size and uh and as long as they have uh heavy operations on scheduling with the customers, they're looking to go digitize the business and put this digital interface uh for their customers and sell online.

It's definitely that's where Omnify provides value. So we we really don't go very focused on category, but uh these are the broad categories that work Omnify works really well for. And and sort of uh focus our efforts uh towards those more.

Host: Yeah, when I actually first saw Omnify, one of the uh thoughts that entered my mind is, I mean if you look at Shopify, right? Shopify before Shopify we had WordPress.

You could technically do most of the things you could do on Shopify uh using WordPress. But it's it's a Hodge Podge mixture of, you know, multiple plugins and there's a setup cost, there's an education cost.

But when Shopify came into the picture, you can basically say out of the box, you just log in, you have the store right there.

So when I saw Omnify, it sort of gave me the same feeling that, hey, you can accomplish a lot of things with something like WordPress or, you know, some other tools that are out there, but if you just pick a specific use case of fitness or recreation, uh okay, Omnify has this specific solution and you can just you know, grab and run from there.

Is is that a fair assessment?

Guest: Right, right. Absolutely. I think that's that's one of the ways uh we would always looked at our our our offering. Uh and uh definitely, I think uh we we really really focus on an integrated experience, right?

And and that's where uh you know, for a small business, uh the biggest challenge see globally, there there's a whole shift on digitization, right?

What that means is uh what probably started with the.com era where everybody wanted a domain name, right? Or a static website, right? Today what that really means is your business is operating online uh in the sense your operations are online.

You're managing cloud-based softwares to manage your business uh internally. Um your your CRMs are online. Right? And your your uh website is no more a static website.

It it becomes an interface where your customers are buying online and interacting with your business online, right? And of course and with this there is a set of businesses that deliver services also online through Zoom, right?

So um so this digitization is sort of um uh the biggest barrier to this is um for businesses is as a small business, if you have to first figure out a solution with multiple softwares, right?

Every software takes no matter how simple you build it, it takes a little there's a learning curve, right?

So you go through the learning curves of multiple softwares and then uh try and figure out how each one should fit in with uh you know, the other one. you literally need consultants to help you with that, right? Of course uh products like Zapier help.

But but still it takes literally uh I mean everybody can't do it, right? It it it narrows down uh the kind of people who can actually afford time, effort and and resources to do that. Yeah.

And that's where it leaves out the, you know, big portion of businesses that are not able to go digitize their whole business because there's something that'll be left out. Right?

So um if you put a payment gateway on your website, but you're literally managing everything on excel sheets. Yeah. it doesn't make a difference in your uh business, right?

It's it's just a way to okay, you've simplified one problem of taking payments, but you know, it adds to another problem of managing and mapping those payments to something, right? Yeah, yeah. So uh so the workflows become key, right?

And the unless you bring the whole business online, your workflows won't work. And and for that you need an integrated solution, right?

And and that's where we believe where we can really have an impact where we're trying to build uh Omnify as a solution for anyone literally to go online, right?

Especially you know, after the pandemic uh there a lot of people are out of jobs and at the end of the day um and and obviously it will be boon uh in some ways to micro entrepreneurship, right? And and it'll all start with people offering services.

Yeah, yeah. And of course, everybody can't build products and and manufacture products and sell products, right?

So I to a large portion of people getting into services and um whatever teach online, whatever you know, go through a course, train, you know. So all of that they'll need a solution, right?

So we're really building Omnify from that perspective where anybody uh should be able to set up themselves uh have everything up and running uh across what they need, right? The most important pieces, right?

It helps them really digitize their business and uh provide this digital interface for their customers.

Host: Taking a step back can you talk about how Omnify started and like how how was your journey been till you know 2020?

Guest: So um it's it's um I I'll try and keep it short because our journey has been long enough. In fact, I just realized I'm I'm sort of come this January I'll be completing about 10 years of uh a personal entrepreneurship journey, right?

And uh and over over these uh 10 years, right? I've I've gone from not understanding what to do and I'll probably run through it fast enough uh just to give a sense of it.

Uh the first business I started was uh right after my uh master's and um I uh that was more of like a I wanted to build actually build like a social network uh kind of solution for sports, right? where you can find people to play with, uh uh find places to play at, book those places and things like that, right?

Um and of course, it came from a personal problem when I was uh studying in England um where I couldn't I used to play football. I couldn't really, you know, I was new to the ecosystem.

So for me it was like a challenge to find either people or places. I didn't know anything, right? So so somewhere it was uh something that I really felt uh that uh that I wanted to do. Um but I I had no clue.

This was back in uh 2010 uh 2011 early uh that I didn't know where to start. So I like okay, let let me start by starting a sports um business, right? So we I started a local league uh when um in New Delhi, right?

And that was that was time I spent from 2011 to 12 was more of actually figuring out uh you know, trying to uh run a local sports business um amateurs uh and uh understand the challenges.

Um I thought we'll we'll we'll sort of scale up revenues and maybe start working on building something. And eventually we realized so hard uh to actually do that.

Um um by 2012, I um you know, I've quit that and I started something where you know, where like okay, let's build build a product, right?

So by end of 2012, I started working on building something uh again towards the same social sports uh uh platform. And um so by 2013 uh so 2013 I moved to uh Bangalore where I got um you know, got into like a accelerator program.

Again, accelerators were new in in India at that time. So we part of uh an accelerator where we were like the batch zero, right? They're experimental batch. Uh but it's a good time because uh you know, as as a I was single founder then.

So you know, you just need that push to like some validation to work on it.

So 2013, I actually uh you know, I I um from 12 to 13, I hired uh a couple of guys, built out the product uh first version of that, more like a league management uh software, right?

So we started with that a little bit of social bits to it but more like uh you know, you can um uh you can basically as an player, you can uh register your teams on the platform, you can uh be part of these leagues. so there's a league management for the league uh organizer and you track your performances across, right? what you're doing for the local uh ecosystem.

Uh so very exciting time. So 2013 was sort of uh going through that phase to launching it, uh trying to uh work and understand. Um and uh during that time, I met my co-founder uh Kavandip, right?

So we um she you know, is is a good time we also were part of another program with NASCOM. And um so sort of had the ecosystem support in in Bangalore for sure, right? where we we had we we didn't really have to pay for an office.

Uh had a fantastic set of uh peer group uh other entrepreneurs around us and literally uh we were uh at these uh accelerator or incubators uh you know, more or less around the clock, right? And you're just focus and doing this.

Um so but with our first product uh what we really realized was uh it's super hard to scale, right? So we were very excited, people were very excited to use it. Uh of course everybody, you know, uh there was nothing like this uh for local sports.

Was it a mobile app or uh or a website at that point? It was uh web based at that time. So it had a um you know, a business side for the league manager.

So you can track literally if you're part of a league, uh you can go to the league manager and say, oh, when is my next match? So it's a full scheduling, you're tracking performances, uh scores, everything, right?

And and uh and uh there was a uh these each as an individual player, I can track it across leagues that I'm playing through the year. Right? So that was the goal.

But we we really um saw that it it's so hard to scale because everything uh I mean how do we we realized the value of customer acquisition or user acquisition, right? And for us it was literally uh doing that user acquisition on ground, right?

Because there was no platform where you can find these players, right? How do you do that? So we we took an approach of uh okay, uh let's try with league organizers with every league you onboard, say uh 500,000 players, right?

Um so but it was still very on ground and and it felt like it would take forever for us to scale and this was just one sport. We started with football. Yeah.

And like if you have to go across another sport, you have to start from scratch in the same city. When we go to another city, we have to start from scratch for all sports. Yeah.

So uh it it uh that that was a problem where network effect was very uh localized. Right? And and so scale would be a challenge.

Um and and so at that point we sort of pivoted and like okay, maybe uh we also realized a couple of things where while it was great for the end users, the league organizer for them, it was a good to have, right?

For them their biggest pain point was getting registrations. Yeah. So uh good thing was we had built a we'll built a enough uh customer base uh where we would send out you know, these SMSs whenever some a new league came on board. Right?

So get registration immediately. So they were literally and we were charging them. From day one we were charging like I think 10 12% of the entry fee um to be part of the platform and they had to use the full platform.

Yeah. felt like the league organizers were were signing up to get the registrations. While having a good to have as a league management tracking and all that, right? While players really liked it.

So model was sort of something that would work but they like okay we're not really solving the pain point for the league organizer. Mhm.

And that's where um we like okay, um maybe and during that time there were other challenges like how do you take payments, right? Literally you have to go across town to collect fees.

Right? uh and simple things like having your website as a local uh uh you know, uh sports organizer um um having a payment gateway um that itself was a challenge.

Only way to do it was through say an event bright or third party. 2013 even sounds like a you know, like 20 years ago or something currently in internet time. Yeah, absolutely. I know.

And uh and that's why uh we thought okay, let's uh simplify it a bit.

Let's just focus on giving uh as a any local sports activity provider, uh let them set up their website uh and payment gateway with ticketing built in in if can make it instant. um you know, uh it it will solve at least one problem well. Right?

And um and that time uh you know, there was a time when getting a payment gateway meant a ton of paperwork, you had to pay like uh a set of fee and you know, what not and then integration was a pain. Mm. You have UPI back then. Nothing.

So uh so we there was a time when Paytm was a payment gateway. Yeah. Right?

So um so we we uh so that was the first thing where we at least saw the value where anything out of the box was like literally you uh go online, sign up and you can set up your website and uh with event ticketing and payments. Right?

Is this the same time you scrapped and you know, uh because your product was uh not scaling well and restarted it?

Guest: Yes, absolutely. So that was uh that was the first time where like we spent like months uh you know, more than actually uh six eight months to build something uh take something to market and completely scrap it. Mhm.

And we built uh another product. Uh we also tried to change the stack uh you know, build uh more like a single page app on some uh new framework. Mhm.

And uh so uh good thing was uh that sort of uh build the seed for the kind of simplicity what we want to bring in to a platform but uh we were targeting uh wrong segment.

We were working the most of the activity and sports organizers uh you know, locally at that time what we were targeting.

Uh I mean for them they're all seasonal businesses. um uh and again, you know, at the end of the day they it all came down to the core problem. The biggest problem was still uh getting registrations, right?

And and at that point you know, we we couldn't find a really good model to charge them. because they were they were you know, SAS wouldn't work, right?

Because they can be seasonal, they can you know, they use it for few months then they're not using and then um they might not have enough registration then what not, right? So different models.

Um but it just felt that we're just targeting the wrong segment, right? Um and at during that time, of course, uh we had worked with uh most of the leagues and that were happening in some of the facilities.

So like okay, why don't we focus on more on facilities since their business is um around the year. you've built it literally.

So you have to run it and um you know, at the end of day everything is happening on these facilities, right? whether it's events, uh leagues or uh coaching, right? and they have to rent out the space also.

So the whole booking the the venues so thing sort of came in.

So we're like okay, yes we then um after that we scrapped that again next year and uh started building our third product, which was more focused on, okay, how do we help a facility more who uh uh like a sports club who have multiple facilities and stuff.

Um you know, help them with renting out their courts or uh events or coaching, right? whatever. So we started there, started building a third product.

And this was sort of um uh during while we're building we I interacted with a lot of businesses locally. One thing we really learned is we like okay, we're just we are just targeting the wrong geography, right?

So uh because the expectation at that point was more of a service, not of a software, right? So while initially our intention was um you know, to really uh learn from the businesses.

So I would actually go and uh sit uh spend uh the full day at one of these facilities, work from there to understand how they operate. Right to build in those workflows and stuff for them.

But I think uh the problem was they started taking it as a service and because it was early while we're building we couldn't charge them, right? So uh so it ended up becoming a free service.

And uh so we're like okay and and the expectation everybody had was a very custom uh solution. So it felt like okay, we will not be able to uh really build I mean our um our vision was always to build a global product, right?

And we we always, you know, uh since since I started uh you know, I've been going to all these local events, startup events and in the ecosystem, right?

And the Gyan that we get is all of at that point at least everybody was talking about was uh, you know, go with your local market first and then expand from there, you know.

But what I realized as a SAS solution, if you try and do that, you end up building a local product. Yeah, right?

And and and that's where we started feeling it where like okay, it doesn't feel like we if we work with this customer base, we're going to build anything which can scale globally.

And that was the point where we we thought okay, let's just change the way we are thinking. why aren't we going global? It's been, you know, this is our third product.

And okay, we have if we have to spend next 5, 10 years of our life doing this, why don't we just go global first, right? Why don't we flip it?

We we got got set up done in US um um set up the company there and uh we we started again uh rebuilding the platform a little and from day one we I mean, we started with the thing where we knew we felt like it is a global problem. Right?

But we didn't have a validation. So we're like okay, if if it is a problem, hopefully people will be searching for the solution. Right? So um I mean our our biggest uh thing that we had to do was to be found if they're looking for a solution. Mhm.

So we focused on at least getting it out there, a little bit of content, our website and uh uh doing basic SEO and uh thankfully we started getting leads where uh customers from across the world were at least talking to us, right?

And that gave us a platform to really really build a global product. How did you think about SEO at that point of time? Like how did you optimize where there any techniques that you guys followed so that you, you know, you become more searchable?

Because I mean even today like SEO is a tough thing. And yeah, I think honestly we did the basic stuff at that point. We uh you know, uh so luckily we we we launched our website on web flow, which takes care of your basics, right? Yeah.

So it's structured well. And then it's all about content. Mhm. And and and this is a time when, you know, it was literally, I think in last uh SEO I would say has become a lot easier than it was 10 years back.

Because you know, earlier it was more about these tagging and all that.

It's still there but it's you know, search engines have become smarter in a way where now it's more about your content as all as long and there are tools which do the basics right. Mhm. Then it's all about the content.

You build quality content, uh you will get uh you know, uh some traffic with that. So, of course, if you have to really nail it down, you have to go deep. Yeah. But get some leads it doesn't take a lot. Yeah, yeah.

Uh and and and that's that's the position where we were uh this was 2015. So we sort of took um we had now had uh customers uh signing up from different uh geographies and talking to us, we're getting on calls. Uh and really taking a lot of feedback.

Uh interestingly from day one, we at least had like a uh beta ready, right? before we went. So for us, there was a starting point, which was our thought process on the solution.

But then uh that also gave us a learning from what are their actual problems, right? And uh from day one we had some pricing up. So we knew people we were talking to are genuine buyers.

So they're not just coming here uh for getting a free solution, right? Which we were used to earlier. Mhm. Um so so that really I think give give us a platform and it changed the way we built the product, right?

And it was literally uh built with uh these customers, right? Um and and and that uh with that 2015 uh to 2016 was this period where we were building the platform, working with these businesses uh whoever was coming in.

Um One of the things that we learned during that time was um uh because it was inbound, right? We didn't really have control over targeting, right? While we started with sports facilities, we were getting all kinds of businesses who were signing up.

Right across segments. And I think uh sometime mid 2016 is where we we started looking at it very differently.

Uh because uh you know, with linkwise with linkwise port, we are obviously getting customers from sports, but there are a lot of fitness businesses who are signing up. And they were using the platform. And for us it just felt off, right?

Because our name also doesn't even look like you for fitness, right? Or for wellness or some other services. And that's that's uh where Omnify sort of came uh into being.

Um our whole thought process shifted. we looked at our uh you know, we did an exercise where we looked at all our customers who had signed up uh you know, not just customers but prospects as well who had signed up, probably didn't use the product, but they were uh looking for the solution and um what they were looking for.

And what we realized was uh you know, fundamentally uh you know, same thing that we now really operate on uh with Omnify is um you know, fundamentally they all need these core things.

They're scheduling, they're selling the services and the communication, right? These are three core things. And then their workflows, use cases. Yeah.

So um and we could see patterns uh like I said uh you know, two different businesses operating very similarly while two similar category businesses operating differently.

So it was more use case driven and we could see that these are untapped categories or these are like uh categories where there's no software available for them or the ones that are available are legacy, right?

So we could see that okay there's a lot of opportunity across these um you know, 50 100 segments. Um and all of them uh can use our platform and we had customers from across multiple segments using our platform uh successfully.

So like okay, so let's uh I think we can build a uh horizontalish platform, not truly horizontal, but at least once one uh you know, multiple categories because we didn't know how to categorize them, right?

At the end of day a software uh you know, you build a software for a category and that's how you create a category, right? for us we could see there's a wide enough category of these multiple segments um that we can go after.

And uh and and that's where sort of uh our pivot to Omnify happened. We rebranded everything. And we changed the approach on how we were uh a little bit on how we built software, right?

So now everything every feature request will will look at uh you know, how do we scale it across multiple use cases? Right? How do we so while it may our job more difficult uh from a product point of view, right?

Uh we also knew that this is and and you know, this is one of the the problems that we're solving is large enough for us to build uh you know, for a longer term. Mhm. And and and truly that uh you know, the whole vision of uh Shopify for services.

Yeah, I mean to me when I first encountered Omnify, it was surprising because I thought a booking and communication problem was already solved, right?

But when I did a little bit more research and then I realized that all the approaches were like, okay, we give you the out of the box software just like WordPress and you can technically do it, but no one is giving you the most simplest form of solution that would work for my use case.

I think that's where at least as an outsider I see where Omnify succeeded as a product. Right.

And and I think today also it looks the same from outside, you'll see it fell feels like a cluttered category where there like hundreds of scheduling applications, right? Or appointment booking applications.

But uh but honestly that only does one part of the job like like and you know, it doesn't even do the whole uh justice to scheduling because as a business if you're talking to for example, if you take take uh I mean probably the most complex use cases would be with the rec center, right?

You have facility rental, which operates absolutely differently than group classes or events or uh personal appointments, right? Each one needs a different solution literally. Yeah.

And you would have to today if if if uh if it is not Omnify, you would literally have to take multiple solutions to get this under one hood, right? And this is just scheduling, right?

Now what we realize is scheduling is where you need uh some some of them have simpler scheduling needs, some of them have these complex multiple scheduling needs, but all of that needs to be under one platform if you have to help them sell all of this together.

Yeah. Right? And then when you sell uh you know, most services are recurring in nature. Right?

So you you sell these services online either um as a uh you know, uh single uh session or you you will be selling it as a package or a subscription or a membership, right?

And and and so that's that's more of uh you know, the goal was how do we productize the whole experience of selling services, right?

Now uh because um one thing, you know, at the end of the day, one thing that has helped helped product e-commerce really thrive is the standardization on how you sell, right?

And maybe uh the marketplaces like Amazon brought that standardization where all you had to do was make sure uh you follow a similar practice on selling, right? Your invent everything and again, it was uh preceded by all these retailers, right?

So Yeah. If you're selling products it literally it doesn't matter what product are you selling, right? Because it's all sold in a same way, inventory management is the same, shipping, everything is more or less same. Yeah.

Right? for services it was it it's still very complex, right? And that's what we are really trying to do is how do we standardize uh a similar thing for services uh uh segment and uh obviously it becomes a lot more complex with scheduling, right?

Uh and and and help help productize the whole selling experience for services. Um and and and really help these businesses automate a lot of it uh, you know, going forward. Right? So how you sell and then how you manage your business.

If you're able to bring in this automation, I mean anyways if you if you put a digital interface, uh you know, half of more than half of your day-to-day job is gone because customers are you know, basically self-managing their own accounts, their own requests, right?

Most of these businesses end up spending uh majority of their time in customer requests, right? or or interfacing, which literally saves you that time and resources to focus on something else and then once you have scheduling, selling, communication all in one platform, you can automate a lot, right?

And that's where you know, we are uh evolving to to bring in a lot more automation into the business as well. Yeah. One of the things you touched upon is uh you know, that giving back time to the customer.

Like whenever I evaluate any business or any idea, the simplest way to look at it is how much time can you give back to your customer. Like for example Amazon, right? What Amazon does is it gives back customer their time.

It it it is literally that, right? You don't have to go to the shop, you don't have to uh you know, spend time on worrying about shipping. It's just works and it gives back customer all his time.

If you put any idea in this format, you can basically see what the value add is. And yeah, I mean that's a that's that's a great way to look at it. I I always looked at it on saving time but giving time back seems better.

Yeah, because time is money, right? when you can't get more uh you can get everything but not time.

Uh so uh I want to talk about uh your current customer exposure, right? you have now talked about okay the India model is not working and you've shifted to uh you know, serving customers globally and what is the what is your current customer uh yeah, you know, diversity like?

Is it primarily US-based or uh where are your customers right now coming from? Um uh our customers today are spread across over 1300 countries. Um but majority of our customer base is uh in in uh North America.

So um that also while I I would say it was uh US would al always account for over 40% of our customer base. Now it would be close to about 80. Got it. Is that because of the pandemic? Uh yes. It did.

Uh so 40 to 50% would be an average before that and uh now it is um 2020 changed that um and uh because we I think 2020 we had to go through a whole new uh survival uh you know, it's like the whole year started with a survival mode on and figuring out uh you know, how do we work with businesses uh as majority of our businesses were very uh customer you know, it all was customer interaction, right?

Our customers everyone was in sports, fitness, activity, recreation, anything you pick up ever shut down. Right. And uh uh a small segment uh you know, could go online, but it was still hard, right?

So for her us we had to really look at uh how do we survive?

So uh and that will I think our uh because we tied up with a partner where we found we sort of um picked up a new solution in the sense uh uh from uh what how Omnify is used uh that helped us survive also, but at the same time um a grow we we we also had a uh good growth uh in 2020.

And this was sort of uh uh majorly in US. So that's why the shift uh sort of happened in uh the geography. So initially during the start of the pandemic you had a big dip and then uh as businesses started coming back online now you see a new demand?

Um actually uh that was that's a natural cycle, but that's a slower cycle, right? We we wouldn't have that would have been a lot longer dip uh if we would wait for demand to come back and especially with the uncertainty, right?

So we we we we we've been uh you know, uh we've been at least 2019 to 20 was a lot of bootstrapping, right? So we're literally um uh you know, making payroll uh every month, right? just just about making payroll every month.

And uh and on top of that, so we didn't have any reserves and on top of that, you know, if you're

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