Q: Do introduce yourself and share your strategic vision for Chitooo. Any significance to the name? Describe its product and services. Saujanya: I’m Saujanya Acharya, co-founder and CEO of Chitooo. We want to simplify technologies for SMEs of emerging economies, helping them to enrich customer experience and overall sales. Although an access to technologies has become far cheaper in the last decade, knowledge is limited to an extent. Chitooo means “quick” in Nepali. We are a solution that allows our customers to be “quick” in the market, and stay ahead. As our first product, Chitooo is a peer-to-peer marketing solution. Our goal is to channel the marketing dollars to accelerate the word of mouth – building up to a higher customer conversion. Through the means of offers and discount, our platform simplifies the process for the SMEs to gain more sales through their customer base Q: What is your key pitch to your potential clients? Why should they choose Chitooo? Saujanya: We maximize the marketing ROI by connecting the right customers with the right business. As our platform allows for a cashless entry, business can adjust their campaign from the free plan to the paid plan, evaluating the outcome of their campaign. Our platform converts the customers of our clients into a promoter; hence we are the catalyst for the word of mouth spreading faster. Q: What are Chitooo’s near-term critical business needs? What are your growth milestones in the next 3 years? Saujanya: Our critical business needs are capital and connection. After completing our successful beta in Kathmandu, Nepal, we are expanding to South East Asia. Making Kuala Lumpur as our first stop, we are establishing the operation here. Doing so, we are burning 1.5x faster than when our operation was only in Nepal. In addition, with the set up of the iOS team and data analytics team, our team size back in Nepal is also increasing. Consequently, we need to raise $500,000 for 18 months runway – with which we can establish our operation in key markets across South East Asia (Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila). Secondly, connection is also a key. Majority of our customers are SMEs. Some of these SMEs are controlled by a hospitality group or a larger holding companies – hence, in order to get a deal from them, it becomes necessary to have a better access to some of these decision makers. Q: Who currently are Chitooo’s target client segments? What is Chitooo’s revenue model? Saujanya: Our target segment is the SMEs of emerging economies that sells physical products or services with an active Facebook page. Our revenue model is a subscription model as well as in-app marketing of some of the online products and services. Q: What aspects of your education and life’s experiences and prepared you for entrepreneurial pursuits? Saujanya: More than entrepreneurship, I have always been fascinated by innovative ways. In college days, this was displayed when organizing events or talk programs. Instead of organizing events, I sought to deliver an event experience. It continued when I joined one of the Fortune 500 companies, working in the project management. This job developed a more entrepreneurial side of me, as I was using the innovative approach to solve a problem in a project or the process. Starting something new, challenging the status quo and coming up with something better and “wow” has always been my passion - be it in a Fortune 500 or in a start up. Q: What do you foresee as critical success factors for Nepal’s businesses to diversify into other marketplaces and in turn say, US companies, to tap on Nepal for their own EXPANSION Saujanya: I believe that it's the network and the access to channel partners in each market. Channel partners play an integral role in expanding into a foreign market, as the network of partners alone will tremendously save various costs. Additionally, we cannot match the speed of expansion, if we were to expand on our own. Hence, it is integral to establishing a symbiotic relation with the channel partners. Q: Do introduce yourself and share your strategic vision for Chitooo. Any significance to the name? Describe its product and services. Saujanya: I’m Saujanya Acharya, co-founder and CEO of Chitooo. We want to simplify technologies for SMEs of emerging economies, helping them to enrich customer experience and overall sales. Although an access to technologies has become far cheaper in the last decade, knowledge is limited to an extent. Chitooo means “quick” in Nepali. We are a solution that allows our customers to be “quick” in the market, and stay ahead. As our first product, Chitooo is a peer-to-peer marketing solution. Our goal is to channel the marketing dollars to accelerate the word of mouth – building up to a higher customer conversion. Through the means of offers and discount, our platform simplifies the process for the SMEs to gain more sales through their customer base Q: What is your key pitch to your potential clients? Why should they choose Chitooo? Saujanya: We maximize the marketing ROI by connecting the right customers with the right business. As our platform allows for a cashless entry, business can adjust their campaign from the free plan to the paid plan, evaluating the outcome of their campaign. Our platform converts the customers of our clients into a promoter; hence we are the catalyst for the word of mouth spreading faster. Q: What are Chitooo’s near-term critical business needs? What are your growth milestones in the next 3 years? Saujanya: Our critical business needs are capital and connection. After completing our successful beta in Kathmandu, Nepal, we are expanding to South East Asia. Making Kuala Lumpur as our first stop, we are establishing the operation here. Doing so, we are burning 1.5x faster than when our operation was only in Nepal. In addition, with the set up of the iOS team and data analytics team, our team size back in Nepal is also increasing. Consequently, we need to raise $500,000 for 18 months runway – with which we can establish our operation in key markets across South East Asia (Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila). Secondly, connection is also a key. Majority of our customers are SMEs. Some of these SMEs are controlled by a hospitality group or a larger holding companies – hence, in order to get a deal from them, it becomes necessary to have a better access to some of these decision makers. Q: Who currently are Chitooo’s target client segments? What is Chitooo’s revenue model? Saujanya: Our target segment is the SMEs of emerging economies that sells physical products or services with an active Facebook page. Our revenue model is a subscription model as well as in-app marketing of some of the online products and services. Q: What aspects of your education and life’s experiences and prepared you for entrepreneurial pursuits? Saujanya: More than entrepreneurship, I have always been fascinated by innovative ways. In college days, this was displayed when organizing events or talk programs. Instead of organizing events, I sought to deliver an event experience. It continued when I joined one of the Fortune 500 companies, working in the project management. This job developed a more entrepreneurial side of me, as I was using the innovative approach to solve a problem in a project or the process. Starting something new, challenging the status quo and coming up with something better and “wow” has always been my passion - be it in a Fortune 500 or in a start up. Q: What do you foresee as critical success factors for Nepal’s businesses to diversify into other marketplaces and in turn say, US companies, to tap on Nepal for their own EXPANSION Saujanya: I believe that it's the network and the access to channel partners in each market. Channel partners play an integral role in expanding into a foreign market, as the network of partners alone will tremendously save various costs. Additionally, we cannot match the speed of expansion, if we were to expand on our own. Hence, it is integral to establishing a symbiotic relation with the channel partners.