Kumar and I thought of Vodex when we were talking about the problems companies have while trying to reach prospects and customers over phone call. We already knew a lot about this because we had run a company working with Chatbots and Voicebots for over 10 years. Many businesses started asking us for a way to have automatic calls that sounded like real people talking. We saw that no one was offering this, so we thought we could fill that need with a new solution that used AI to make the calls feel more personal.

Q2. What made you start working on Vodex and executing this idea?

What made us start working on Vodex was seeing a problem that businesses had with leveraging automation while trying to reach out to prospects and customers over phone calls. There were issues with both businesses as well as at the consumer end. While going for automation, Businesses were facing issues like expensive bot development fee or frustrating IVR experience, while doing it manually, they had to incur expensive costs for hiring training and retaining human resources. At the same time it was not a good experience at the consumer end as well. IVRs were unable to answer any queries and bots were saying sorry I didn't understand that most of the time. With human resources, consistency of experience was a big challenge, while some reps were really good, some were really bad.

Q3. When did you realise the need to raise Venture Capital - Seed funding?

We realised quite early in our journey that we need to raise VC funding. When we focused on one niche which is Outbound calls for B2C businesses, we realised we will need VC funding to make it bigger. While initially we bootstrapped to build the MVP and initial customer validation, to make it bigger and scalable, we needed VC investment.

Q4. How has 100X helped you at the beginning of your journey?

100X has provided invaluable support in the initial stages, offering mentorship, resources, and access to networks crucial for growth. We were able to not only build the product we wanted to build but also could deploy it to clients from various industry segments. Thanks for the network, the mentorship and the support provided by 100x.

Q5. What challenges did you face & how did you overcome them?

While starting with building Vodex we faced some technical challenges like how to provide real time response over phone call. Delay in voice bot response was a big challenge for us which we managed to solve. Apart from that, finding our Ideal customer was a big challenge for us. We experimented with various industry segments and verticals. The problem with selling to the wrong ICP is that you can do 1 - 2 sales easily but after that it becomes very difficult to sell to other similar people. Finding the right messaging and right Marking channel was also a challenge which we managed to overcome eventually.

Q6. What stage is Vodex at present?

We launched the first version of Vodex by mid of last year. That was kind of an MVP version where we just integrated off the shelf speech recognition, NLP Engine and TTS. We built a product which had minimal features just enough so that customers can understand the value of our product. From this MVP itself, we generated more than 20L in revenues. We have now moved to the Post MVP stage and are soon launching version 2.0 of our product. This post-MVP stage indicates that Vodex has moved beyond the initial experimental phase and has a working product that has been validated by customers. The focus is now on expanding the product's capabilities, optimizing its performance, and increasing its market presence.

Q7. As founders, what are your goals for the next 1-2 years?

Currently we have around 30 paying customers. Our main focus for the next 1 - 2 years is to build upon those existing customers, understand how we solved their problems using Vodex and find the niche or vertical where we can provide the most value to our customers. Our focus will be to find the product market fit and to create a GTM engine so that we can get new paying customers on a regular basis with minimal efforts. Our focus will also be on customer success and retaining our existing customers so that churn can be reduced and our customers can get maximum value out of the product. Our focus will also be on improving our offerings by implementing state of the art technology solutions and staying ahead of the competition.

Q8. What keeps you motivated & keeps you going?

As a founder, you need to be really passionate about what you are building. Fortunately, my co-founder and I both are passionate about technology. We have been working in the AI Space since early 2014 - 2015 and now after this Generative AI, we are super excited to create meaningful solutions for our customers using powers of LLMs and Generative AI. We are super excited and motivated by the fact that we are living in this age where AI is no longer a science fiction but is actually being used by various businesses across the globe and we have potential to build AI powered products from India which can be used by customers across the world.

Q9. Your message for Startup founders building in the same sector?

Here is my message to other startup founders building in the same sector. Start with talking to your potential customers and identify the problem that you are going to solve. Do not start with technology and just think about what cool thing I can build with this technology. Instead talk to customers, understand their pain points and challenges, then think about what you want to build and why. Do not build a full fledged product at the start, instead start with building a MVP first. Show them to your potential customers and ask for their feedback. Based on their inputs, improve your product. Charge from day 1, do not just offer your product for free. You get real feedback and insights from your customers only when you charge them. People don’t generally give much thought to free products. Those who are really your customers, those who want you to solve their problems will pay you even if your charges are high and they will work with you closely, will provide you feedback to help you build the product. Keep learning, start small, execute fast.

About Anshul Shrivastava:

With 12+ years in the IT industry, Anshul has fostered a deep passion for technology, with a particular focus on AI and cutting-edge advancements. Currently, he serves as the Founder and CEO of Vodex.ai, a platform dedicated to delivering