FindYahan founder starts sales team aggregation platform to help companies boost sales
Avenue Growth is a platform that aggregates some of the best sales professionals from across the country and channelises them to enable companies to reach out to customers across India.
One of the biggest challenges for a business, when it is at the cusp of scaling, is ramping up operations along with getting the team to work in different gears. It was something that Rachit Mathur, Co-founder and CEO of FindYahan which was later acquired by Zimmber, had realised.
Rachit’s past entrepreneurial journey gave him insights into manpower fulfilment across various customer categories. FindYahan was a hyperlocal retail-facing business with each case unique. However, after the company’s acquisition, Rachit, looking to do something different, came across success stories of various customer acquisition platforms in various countries.
“On further probing I realized that my FindYahan experience would certainly come in handy. Here we are helping a company get the right team on ground with the required skill-set, talent, and experience,” says Rachit.
What it does?
Rachit then launched Avenue Growth with his acquaintance and friend Dilkash Malhotra, who has worked with different organisations like METRO Cash & Carry, Pepprfry.com, Yebhi.com, and Guthy-Renker.
Avenue Growth is a customer acquisition solution that helps accelerate growth. The platform aggregates some of the best sales professionals from across the country and channelises them to enable companies to reach out to customers across India. Rachit explains,
“This is very popular model internationally and will surely prove to be innovative and disruptive in the Indian market. Companies (small, medium, or large) can focus on what they do best—developing the best products and solution and for sales. Avenue Growth will ensure that they have instant access to a best skilled, experienced, scalable and ready-to-deploy sales force anytime, anywhere.”
The actual workings
A company reaches out to Avenue Growth to sell its products across specified locations. Sales professionals from across the country enlist on the platform as ‘growth specialists’. The client is also given a customised brand dashboard. Based on the requirements of the client and their experience, area of operation, and inclination, growth specialists are assigned to the client(s).
Through the brand dashboard, client can share leads and brief the on-ground team about the product or solution. Client can also track the progress of the sales process. Success parameters are set in tandem with client’s brief. The client pays for the successful closure of the sale; Avenue Growth deducts 25 to 40 percent of the commission which is shared with the growth specialist.
Rachit adds that the objective is to provide speedy market access to companies through a scalable sales force solution. The platform helps brands ramp up their operations, in any location, across India instantly and empowers the sales professionals on making smart decisions by analysing clients and their needs, which results in faster closure of sales.
Real-time help
“With Avenue Growth, no place in India would be inaccessible to any brand/company. You name a place and Avenue Growth has a resident sales talent pool in that geography. Brands get access to the best talent pool of on-ground sales force that is fully scalable and ready to go,” says Rachit.
The platform enables skilling and provides opportunity to become freelance sales professionals. All training modules are online making it possible to train and board people from remote locations.
Rachit adds that brands can monitor real-time progress, sales status, and customer growth. Avenue Growth offers a transactional revenue model where brands pay on successful closure of the sale.
When the duo acquired their first customer they didn’t even have an office of their own. “Another big moment was when we started getting queries from not just software companies but also companies belonging to other more traditional sectors like FMCG, consumer durables, etc,” says Rachit.
The gig economy
There are growing number of platforms that work as aggregators for freelance professionals. Some of the top names in the space include Elance, Upwork, Toogit. Last year, PwC also announced that it launched a marketplace where freelance workers can upload their resumes and apply for work on projects for PwC clients.
Popularly known as ‘gig economy’, the India market size is approximately at 15 million independent workers. According to a Truelancer report, the global market is pegged somewhere between $2-3 billion of which India accounts for about $1 billion. Of the pie, close to 21 percent accounts for sales and marketing roles.
Differentiator and future growth
Rachit adds that based on the client brief, area of operations, type of product/solutions to be marketed, and target customer, Avenue Growth selects the right team of growth specialists that best fits the requirement.
A thorough background check is carried out to verify the credentials like work experience, qualifications, past performance, social profile, etc. And each growth specialist is internally rated on these parameters.
By 2020, Avenue Growth plans to on-board more than 1 million growth specialist to serve all sectors across the length and breadth of India.
“We aim to be a lean organization throughout and keep our overheads low. We are using technology to manage our freelancers and provide valuable insights to brands. We want to further strengthen our technology, increase our presence, and eventually explore the Asian market,” says Rachit.