This startup helps small retailers scale with its SaaS-based optimisation tools

There are several ecommerce ventures worldwide that grapple with making customer journeys smooth. Bengaluru-based startup ConvertCart helps ease this problem by making finding and purchasing a product easy, and also keeping customers engaged in the process.

Founded by Venkat Rajendra and Arun Kumar in 2014, the startup uses visitor behaviour data with machine learning algorithms to simplify the entire purchase journey.

"The net result is increased conversion and a significant increase in revenue for the website. Small business owners are often unable to get the best out of the tools they use, and a higher level of customer support is required," says Arun Kumar, Co-founder of ConvertCart.

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The founders

Venkat Rajendran is a serial entrepreneur. He was a core team member at C-DOT and headed its software development for almost a decade. He founded Deccanet Designs in telecom products design, which was later acquired by Flextronics. Venkat likes to build software tools and teams.

Arun Kumar is an entrepreneur and millennial techie who is hooked to internet technologies. He sought out Venkat (his uncle) to start a new venture right after graduating in computer science engineering.

The duo decided to build a scalable SaaS business, and began to search for a good problem to solve. During this search, Arun helped a fashion ecommerce venture, improving the company’s customer experience and increasing conversion on the website. This seemed a very interesting problem area to address, and ConvertCart was born.

"Our eCommerce tools platform is cloud based, and solves the problems of ecommerce businesses. It is done without any change to the existing website. It takes just five minutes to install our tools. Our solutions are in the form of overlay and they directly work on the visitor’s browser," says Arun.

ConvertCart’s tools analyse visitor behaviour data continuously, and applies machine learning algorithms to help improve the customer journey.

The startup also provides a customer support team to its clients. As the company supports all major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Woo Commerce and Magento, it is easy for the ecommerce companies to integrate with its tools.

"Our tools do not work in silos. Our data analytics engine is shared across the entire tools platform, improving the overall performance significantly. With ConvertCart’s tools installed, clients can focus on their core business, and also engage and retain customers with great experience," says Arun.

The product helps in onsite messaging (exit intent, email op-in and offers), discovery, UI optimisation and data analytics. Retailers like FlashRouters, Squatty Potty, GetFPV work with ConvertCart.

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The business

India’s SaaS revenue has reached $3.5 billion, and is growing at more than 30 percent CAGR according to data from NASSCOM. It is expected to grow three times by 2025. India is set to become a global hub for SaaS, aided by a vast talent pool of software engineers, funding support and mentorship. The global SaaS market is estimated to touch $400 billion by 2025 according to Nasscom. 

Companies like Zoho and Freshworks address horizontal markets with a suite of products that solve multiple problems of businesses and people. Others specialise in niche segments and provide interesting solutions in marketing, ecommerce, healthcare, HR, etc. There are opportunities in B2B and B2C SaaS, with a major spurt seen in the B2B space. Indian SaaS companies have successfully mastered selling to B2B clients through the internet.

"When we built our prototype, we decided to find a customer in the USA, which is our key target market. It turned out easier than we anticipated. When we showcased the demo to a mobile retail ecommerce business and pointed out the problems in their website, they realised that our tool can even solve those pain points. The retailer signed up immediately with his credit card, and the first month’s subscription was credited to ConvertCart. We solved many problems on his website, and his revenue shot up by more than 100 percent. Over time, we actually learnt a lot from the customers about real problems, and best models of customer engagement. These learnings stay with us even today and we continue to learn and improve," says Arun Kumar.

The startup is approaching $5 million ARR in FY2020. They have raised an undisclosed seed round from Ideaspring Capital. Since they have a product-market fit, they are now scouting for a Series A investment.

The startup operates on a SaaS business model where customers sign up for a monthly or quarterly subscription.

ConvertCart hosts its products on the cloud, and installation does not take much effort on the customer’s part.

"We have a proven inside sales model that helps scale from India. Our tools are driven by a powerful analytics engine and machine learning, which helps the customers get great results,” says Arun.

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Market focus

Talking about their target market, Arun says they are primarily focusing on North America and Europe, where small and medium ecommerce businesses are growing rapidly.

"Since the US is the biggest and fastest to adapt to SaaS, we did not find it hard to get cracking in that market. Decision-making cycle is also fast in the West and so we decided to focus on the North American market, build scale and then spread to other markets,” adds Arun.

He says the Indian market is still relatively small and growing. “Unlike the US, there is no acceptance of the credit card linked automatic subscription. What’s more - every large company tries to solve their problems in-house."

According to KPMG, retail ecommerce has reached $4 trillion worldwide. The US is a major market at $800 billion, and growing at a whopping 33 percent over the last year. The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way people shop, it has helped people move to online buying in a big way.

ConvertCart’s main competitors are Persado, SocialProve and Picreel, and all of them are based in the US.