The extraordinary journey of a 3-time entrepreneur

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. Since then he has founded a pigeon roofing venture, Burrp – a food tech startup. 

In this episode he talks about his upbringing, his early ventures, mistakes he has made, and his current startup CleverTap. 

CleverTap is a user retention platform that helps companies retain users for life, with 1200 clients like Jio, Times Group, Swiggy, PayTM, and Dream 11. They have an innovative patented database technology called TesseractDB, which helps companies collect and store user data that can later be used for user analytics and customized messaging. CleverTap has recently raised a Series D round of $105 Million led by CPDQ. 

Tune in to this episode to gain insights into a self-made entrepreneur’s life, acquisitions, intricacies of ABMs, and First Principles thinking. Anand has a refreshing perspective on entrepreneurship and innovation. His stories of cycling to the ISRO computer lab at the age of 16, writing his first program, and having the confidence to solve any problem will surely shine light onto the entrepreneurial mindset every founder needs to have. 

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!