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!