We started 2022 on a high because it meant finally getting to work out of our brand-new office space in Coimbatore. Our office ambiance resembles most tech offices in Silicon Valley positioning our core aim of creating and delivering world-class software products from a tier II city.
In a bid, to retain the enormous talent pool that Coimbatore boasts of, we have always aimed to create opportunities and a work atmosphere that can match any SaaS company in a bigger city.
There was a temporary slowdown in business due to the Russia-Ukraine war, but that gave us the time to strengthen our products—Serverless360 & Document360. We also targeted launching the newest product in our portfolio—Churn360, a customer success platform.
Adding another feather to our cap, Kovai.co bagged the Export Excellence Award for their performance while working out of Tidel Park SEZ in 2019 – ’20 conferred by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
While we achieved the milestone of crossing $10 million ARR in 2021, we now aim to cross $30 million ARR by 2025 and become the first SaaS unicorn out of Coimbatore by 2030.
2022 Business Goals
We managed to scale successfully in terms of people, workspace, and products. Serverless360 and Document360 were receiving good traction.
Company-wise, we had aimed to build the brand Kovai.co, among the SaaS community in Tamil Nadu and the tech industry in the Western region as a great place to work in. We aimed to create a strong affinity with the brand, on social media and offline, as part of our long-term goal of creating a SaaS ecosystem in Coimbatore.
Product-wise, we were successful in scaling the customer base along with new revenue for Document360 and Serverless360. We have four products under our portfolio—BizTalk360, Serverless360, Document360, and Cerebrata. We merged Severless360 and Cerebrata into a single product so resources could be shared and make Document360 function as a standalone entity within Kovai.co. We also aimed to launch Churn360, which we had been working on past two years, by mid-2022.
All the above goals were again steps keeping in mind our larger goal of becoming a unicorn by 2030.
Accomplishment of goals
2022 was a remarkable year in terms of achievements. Whistle, we came short on our customer acquisition target, the revenue made up for it.
When it came to building brand awareness, online and offline, we managed to get covered in national & international publications including Mint, Hindustan Times, Money Control, The Hindu, and Forbes to mention a few. We also got a membership with Forbes Council, a prestigious platform for Business founders to share their thoughts and network. More than 20 opinions from our CEO Saravana Kumar were published as listicles, many shared by Forbes council on LinkedIn. We also got eight thought leadership articles under Saravana’s authorship published.
On social media channels, we saw the number of followers on LinkedIn, also a preferred recruitment platform, double from 17,000 to 35,000, through continuous engagement and a revamp of our life page.
On the product front, 2022 was a landmark year on multiple fronts. Microsoft’s announcement in January of that year, advising customers using BizTalk server 2020 to consider cloud solutions in Azure became a game changer for our azure management platform, Serverless360. We saw a strong uptick in numbers, leading to us achieving 40% growth in customers.
Our strategic decision to review the pricing plan of Document360 has seen a positive uptick from our target customers. In fact, it was around six months after the price increase, that we crossed the milestone of 1000 customers. We also introduced a freemium version, which helped a lot of new customers see the value they derive from the product prior to purchase. We are now proudly serving 100k+ users.
Major Features of Document360
In September, we launched Churn360, our customer success platform. We have already managed to acquire our first few customers, who are deriving value from our product.
Key Performance Indicators and Results
We have never been a company that has focussed only on numbers. Though we have recorded an increase in customers and revenues, being customer-obsessed, we have always chosen to consider their feedback as a primary indicator of growth.
We have received multiple testimonials on how our products have helped ease of doing business, helped reduce customer support tickets, improved their customer acquisition efforts, and facilitated customers to self-serve, which is what we aimed to achieve when we built our products.
Our products were rated as leaders in their respective categories by top review sites like G2 and Capterra. Serverless360 bagged 8+ awards across seasons from G2 categories under multiple categories. Document360 was declared as a leader in the knowledge management space category both in the summer and winter seasons.
New Marketing Initiatives Introduced
Our flagship event, Integrate2022, was bigger and better. We decided to conduct it in a hybrid format, where it was both a virtual and in-person event after two years. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of BizTalk and Azure users, experts, and Microsoft MVPs who attended the event from across the world.
BizTalk360 Updates
This year we also launched a podcast on Azure which has a growing audience, and we even got a Microsoft professional Kent Weare as a guest speaker for one of them.
Document360 also introduced many new marketing initiatives like conducting new events like a Techwriters Meet Up in Tel Aviv, which was an attempt to nurture the tech writer’s community and showcase our product to potential customers. We also sponsored and put up a booth in events for tech writer community like NORDIC Techkomm in Netherlands and Tech Writers Tribe Meet in Bangalore.
Our latest product, Churn360 Director, Suprej Venkat, attended SaaSTR in Dublin along with Saravana who also gave a talk at the event.
Extending our Office Space
In November, we inaugurated a 6,000 sq ft extension of our office space in Coimbatore. The space located just below our 270-seater space can accommodate around 60 people. It was inaugurated by CEO and founder of Kissflow, Suresh Sambandam.
We had around 50+ people join our team last year. In a bid to continue attracting top talent from the city and region, we have introduced multiple benefits that match those of SaaS companies anywhere in the world. We introduced the Together We Grow bonus for employees who will stay with us for three years, team outings for people every quarter and a scheme for employees to keep their laptops after a certain period of service.
Opportunities for Next Year
We aim to scale and accelerate our growth across our key products—Serverless360, Document360, and Churn360 in 2023, as another step towards achieving our goal of $30 million ARR by 2025. We will also continue to hire for critical positions and grow our team in a sustainable manner. In a bid to consistently improve the work atmosphere and benefits for our people, we will be looking carefully at the results of the employee pulse survey we conducted and bring in more employee benefits.
