“Don’t give up. Perseverance is key to start-up success. But it doesn’t mean doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for success! Try different approaches. It is important to fail fast and learn.” – Veena Giridhar Gopal

Founder@ Interview

Interview with Veena Giridhar Gopal

“Don’t give up. Perseverance is key to start-up success. But it doesn’t mean doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for success! Try different approaches. It is important to fail fast and learn.” – Veena Giridhar Gopal

Today we feature Veena Giridhar Gopal, the founder at Salesbeat. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

I am currently the CEO of salesBeat (also a co-founder) and look after anything that is not related to technology. So that includes sales, marketing, strategy, finance, investor relations, HR etc.

SalesBeat is an AI-driven platform that processes micro and macro factors to model consumer buying behaviour and makes predictive recommendations of optimal stock levels to supermarkets and optimal sales volumes to sales teams, eliminating lost sales due to being out of stock and overstocking.

A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?

I grew up in India and qualified as an accountant in Botswana, where I spent several years advising companies including those in retail and consumer goods. After business school at INSEAD in France, I moved to the UK to work with Pepsi and then stayed in the UK where I worked at a wine company following PepsiCo and then Diageo.

I worked across several roles, ranging from finance to market entry and sales. I resigned from my last corporate position at Diageo and worked as an independent consultant for start-ups and scale-ups.

I eventually started salesBeat to solve some of the problems I helped companies with in a way that was scalable. When covid struck we pivoted, as we saw consumers behave in new ways which would have an indelible impact on sales forecasts and existing demand planning systems. We realised then that this would drive them out of stock in the future.

Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?

SalesBeat is an AI driven platform that processes micro and macro factors to model consumer buying behaviour and makes predictive recommendations of optimal stock levels to supermarkets and optimal sales volumes to sales teams, eliminating lost sales due to being out of stock and overstocking.

SalesBeat also makes optimal promotion recommendations to make the most of certain events/occasions & also to deplete stocks. Salesbeat is a fully remote company and has a team spread across Nigeria, India, Sweden, and in the UK.

What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?

We started salesBeat as a platform matching companies in the sector with talent, suppliers, manufacturers, and consultants. When covid struck we pivoted, as we saw consumers behave in new ways which would have an indelible impact on sales forecasts and existing demand planning systems.

We realised then that this would drive us out of stock in the future. Recognising an opportunity and pivoting on a timely basis was a big part of how we got here. But it was perseverance that got us to where we are currently. #

We are also backed by VCs and angels who have been a great source of support and also by a team of advisors who have deep industry experience and are happy to help with advice and connections where necessary.

Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?

When covid struck we pivoted, as we saw consumers stockpile toilet paper and canned foods in March and then behaved in new ways due to lockdowns driving work from home and restricting eating out. We knew then that these changes would persist which would have an indelible impact on sales forecasts and existing demand planning systems.

We realised then that this would drive us out of stock in the future. However, communicating the problem was hard as not many people had experienced this in stores. Also, those who had thought it was a one-off that happened, while there were several instances even pre-covid like ice-creams going out of stock during heatwaves.

So we worked on developing one-liners, and examples of out-of-stock situations to communicate what we did and why.

Practice was important we used every new social encounter as a pitching opportunity, to see if the layperson understood what we did. We asked mentors and advisors for help in crafting the messaging so that anyone outside the industry could understand it.

Starting Salesbeat with my co-founder – Alex, raising our first round and recruiting a team that is gender balanced are achievements I am proud of.

If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

I would advise my younger self to take the leap of entrepreneurship before I actually did. And it is a leap. It gets more difficult as time goes by and we get comfortable working for someone else. Also, I would advise patience (which I’m still short of!).

I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I always knew I would become an entrepreneur too. I was lucky to have family and friends who supported and encouraged me to become an entrepreneur.

We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?

We use several different tools within the business, depending on the function. We use Trello to manage the different workflows in our tech team, Slack for communication, Xero for accounting, and Canva for design, posting on social media etc.

We are a fully remote company and so Whatsapp and Zoom feature heavily too. Canva is the only tool we started using later. While we were aware of Canva, there was no real need to use it in our first few years.

My technical co-founder was aware of Trello, Canva & Slack, having used them before. I had used Xero in previous roles before.

Zoom was new when we started using it (in 2019) and we heard about zoom when we decided to become a fully remote company and started looking for video conference apps.

We were all personal users of Whatsapp. So this wasn’t new.

What do you know now that you wished you had known before?

I wish I had known how important it is to widen my network into the tech community too. Most of my network is either in the FMCG industry or in business.

I also wish I had picked up some basic tech skills and knowledge myself. This would have given me the background to understand how development works and what the tech team needs from the business side when we put requests through.

What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?

Starting Salesbeat with my co-founder – Alex, raising our first round and recruiting a team that is gender balanced are achievements I am proud of.

What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?

We (at Salesbeat) want to build a company that is synonymous with sales intelligence/demand sensing in the FMCG/supermarket sector. The importance of data and leveraging AI/ML is sorely underestimated in the sector.

This is because companies want to use their own homegrown systems and cannot spare the resources to build optimal solutions. However, our goal is to build trust with our customers and users so we become the go-to company for sales intelligence and demand-sensing software.

To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?

Don’t give up. Perseverance is key to start-up success. But it doesn’t mean doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for success! Try different approaches. It is important to fail fast and learn.

“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Salesbeat”

To learn more about Salesbeat Visit www.salesbeat.co

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