BSharp aims to transform sales engagement for business by creating sales-friendly apps
Prithviraj Banerjee, Gopal Swaminathan, and Dr. Siddharth Singh friends for 20 years, were looking for a solution that could be developed in India and sold globally. The trio combined had experience in the fields of operations, marketing strategy, technology, and business. After brainstorming on several ideas and concepts, they closed down on the idea of BSharp as a mobile-first sales enablement platform.
Prithvi had built complex digital marketing platforms for top global marketing agencies. Gopal, with his passion about sales, knew the challenges of salesperson first hand. Siddharth Singh, the advisor, was a global thought leader in customer-centric marketing approach. All these three aspects came together in the form of BSharp.
Prithvi says that in the space that is crowded with several companies offering just mobile content and training as sales enablement, BSharp offers customer conversation centric sales focus and help the sales team to sell more with a better product mix. This calls for a portfolio of inter-connecting features, which isn't just restricted to mobile content and training.
How the platform works
The BSharp mobile apps are designed to provide salespersons everything they need to make customer conversations more effective. The hosted application can connect to major CRM's and native iOS and android applications can work in offline mode – without network connectivity.
"We have been live with our patent-pending customer-centric features for more than a year with leading global brands in several verticals, including Healthcare, Smartphones, Computers, Consumer Electronics, CPG, Publishing and Medical Devices. Our hosted solution has been architected for scale and is currently being used by more than 10,000 salespersons every day," says Prithvi.
Team building
Gopal quit his corporate job and started Bsharp off the ground in Bengaluru. Soon after, Prithvi moved to India temporarily (from US) and joined Gopal. Siddharth continued to provide his strategic advisory support. Today the team consists of 20 members. Prithvi moved back to US and started the US operations this year.
Sudhir Krishna, the CTO, has held various product development responsibilities during his 12 years at SAP. In his last role, as Vice President of SAP’s NetWeaver Mobile Platform, Sudhir has set and delivered on the mobile strategy for SAP.
Rajev Shukla works as an advisor. He headed global Ponds Brand for Unilever. He also is an Investor and Senior Board Advisor in Private Equity and Venture Capital, focussing on technology and consumer opportunities. Andy Macey, is another Advisor, Board Member in CommonAngels Ventures. He headed Digital Strategy and Innovation for CVS Healthcare and Luxottica.
Gopal adds that the team is a mix of young engineers, creative and operations people who like to experiment. "We completely revamp our applications each year – to keep pace with innovation in the mobile space, and our hiring strategy is to recruit people who are aligned with this approach. People who can get out of their comfort zone and are not afraid to deconstruct and rebuild," says Gopal.
Funding and market space
Currently bootstrapped, the team will be raising funding soon. Prithvi says that they will be extending their SaaS offerings to small and mid-size businesses. The beta platform with the initial set of features was launched recently. The next version will be released in January 2016.
Gartner claims that the Indian CRM software market is believed to be at close to 15 per cent of the Asia Pacific market. Thus, making India the second largest after Australia. From 2009 to 2014, the market displayed a compounded annual growth of 16–19 per cent.