Ex-Zynga product manager returns to India, launches Interakt, an all-in-one customer engagement platform
Sudhanshu Aggarwal started Fizzy Software back in 2007 while he was still in college in the US. The vision was to build a web and mobile products lab that focused on design, analytics and feedback. In 2008, the team sold some of their Facebook and iPhone apps which gave them a small exit. Post this, in 2010 Sudhanshu got the opportunity to work at Zynga in San Francisco as a Product Manager. After a year at Zynga, Sudhanshu again had this urge to build something. “We had played in the consumer market but now I realized the stability that comes with an enterprise venture,” says Sudhanshu. This is where the brainstorming that led to Interakt began.
“There are so many businesses with an online presence and the need to manage all the processes is a must,” says Sudhanshu. Products like Marketo exist for bigger companies, but Interakt is a tool that targets small and medium businesses. It is an all-in-one customer engagement platform that allows website and mobile app marketers to easily capture, engage and retain their customers from one single tool. Using Interakt, you can manage leads, view customer data and profiles, send marketing, automated and transactional emails, view email stats, provide live chat support, publish notifications and collect feedback. Interakt works with all major languages and also has one-click integrations for a lot of e-commerce and PaaS platforms like shopify, magento, woocommerce, cloudflare, heroku, etc.
“After working on a lot of products we always faced the same challenges of managing customer interactions across different tools. We came across some tools which were trying to solve the problem. However, since we were not fully satisfied we decided to build our own,” says Sudhanshu. They were pretty clear about the area they wanted to enter in and the value proposition they could bring. “We are not targeting the Fortune 500, we’d be happy with the Fortune 5 million,” says Sudhanshu with a grin. A team of seven based out of Gurgaon, Interakt is a product under Fizzy Software Pvt. Ltd. The revenue model is a Freemium SaaS one with paid plans starting from $19/month (see how Indian SaaS companies price their product).
The team has been building the product since the past six months and launched it publicly in February this year. They’ve had more than 200 signups and also have a few paid customers already. Completely bootstrapped, Sudhanshu says that their focus is on the product at the moment and they may start looking to raise funding once they have more clarity on the product following feedback from their customers. Talking about the future path, he adds, “We are looking to ramp up our team to continue building a product based on customer feedback, launch our mobile SDK and grow our customer base.”
The enterprise startups from India have caught up and we’re seeing global products being made from India. WebEngage, Wingify, Interviewstreet, FreshDesk, etc are some success stories. As the startup ecosystem evolves, we’re seeing more and more seasoned professionals starting up in the enterprise space. Fizzy Software has had experience building products but with Interakt, the focus has shifted to enterprise and the coming months will tell how much traction they can achieve with the SMB segment.
Website: Interakt.co