Avenue Growth: Enabling Innovations in Customer Acquisition

An Interaction with Avenue Growth | TelecomDrive.com

Rachit Mathur, Co-founder & CEO, Avenue Growth interacts with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the focus on the company and how it is bringing innovation to the fore, in a digital era. 

What is the idea behind Avenue Growth? How is it relevant in the current digital era?

Companies/brand that have speed, efficiency and resources on the ground are going to be winners in this cut-throat competitive world. In pursuit of the customer the companies and organizations need to ramp-up their operations/reach very fast across disparate geographies else they risk losing traction and some other player might just take the march. But this is easier said than done and it is a costly and you risk expanding too fast making it unsustainable.

What you need is flexible, speedy and scalable expansion.  This idea set me on a thought train that has led to Avenue Growth, India’s first Customer Acquisition solution that accelerates growth of brands by providing them with an on-demand on-ground sales force which can be activated instantly, at any location.
How does Avenue Growth benefits the brands/companies?

Platforms like Avenue Growth offer inherent benefits to brands. They can now expand their reach to any location across India instantly through freelance Growth Specialists (Sales professionals) without committing any significant resources.

While sitting in one location any CEO or sales head can have access to experienced and trained sales force at any location(s) of his/her choice. With Avenue Growth no place in India would be inaccessible to any brand/company. You name a place 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!

The objective is to provide speedy market access to companies through a scalable sales-force solution. This model is extremely popular in developed economies like USA, Germany, UK etc.

Advantage for brands

• No financial burden for geographical expansion of sales operations - A zero risk model, requires no financial commitment from brands. Avenue Growth offers a transactional revenue model where brands pay on successful closure of the sale.
• The Growth Specialists are able to close direct sales in markets across India.
• Brands can monitor real time progress, sales status and customer growth. We offer a risk free solution for business to grow.
• Pan India presence – No city, town or village is out of reach.
• Instant deployment - The client company can instantly ramp-up its operations in any part of the country
• Our technology enables brands to monitor sales, leads, closures on a real time basis.
• A boon for small and medium sized companies as they can now enter new geographies or initiate product trials in them without ever worrying about the sales talent -- their salaries or retention
• The model is fully scalable according to the need – can be expanded or curtailed any time
• No headaches of managing people and other related issues with hiring a sales force.
• Best sales talent at hand – anytime, anywhere

Curated sales professionals

• Based on the client brief, area of operations, tyoe of product/solutions to be marketed and target customer, Avenue Growth selects the right team Growth Specialists that best fits the requirement.
• A thorough background check is carried out to verify the credentials like work experience, qualifications, past performace, social profile etc. And each Growth Specialist is internally rated on these parameters.

What's the deal for on-ground sales people you call Growth Specialists, why should they come on to the Avenue Growth platform? What kind of people can join here?

The platform enables skilling and provides opportunity to become freelance sales professionals. All training modules are online... technology makes it possible to train and board people from remote locations.

Advantage Sales professionals

• Growth in income
  • Sales professionals can further leverage their experience and network by monetizing the free-time available to them
• Freedom & flexibility
  • Avenue Growth also provides them opportunity to become independent sates professionals and work for multiple brands and products according to their interest and skills
  • Work when they want to -- not bound by a fixed workday. Plan their own woking hours
• Training and support
  • Our technology handholds the sales team through entire sales process.
  • The platform also enables skilling and training of sales professionals.
• Opportunities to expand horizons
  • Sales professionals could opt to serve new verticals (products/solutions & target segments)
  • Diversify their selling skills and profile by broadenning their product portfolio and target segments/sector
  • Opportunities to work for leading brands that would certainly boost the career trajectory

What kind of companies can use Avenue Growth solution?

Although we started out with an objective to serve the Digital/SAAS companies but to our pleasant surprise enquiries started pouring in from sectors as diverse as Software solutions providers to Consumer durables to packaged food companies and other FMCG companies among others. Realizing that our model can be all encompassing, we did a sort of pivot to our business mode.

Hence everyone is invited – Pharmaceuticals, Brown goods, White Goods, Handset manufacturers/marketers, FMCG, Digital/SAAS/Software solutions providers, industrial goods etc. Avenue Growth is going to be on stop platform for all sales needs in any part of India (and may be beyond), whatever be the industry or sector the brand operates in.

How many clients do you have as of now and what is the scope for growth?

The Avenue Growth concept has enjoyed speedy acceptance across brands as well as free lancers. In just four months of operations we have on-boarded 12 brands viz. Shopify (one the world’s leading DIY platforms), Wydr, The Man Company, Volody among others Our Growth Specialist network comprises of 2500+ freelance sales professionals spread over 205 Indian cities. Avenue Growth is generating healthy revenues and growing aggressively month on month.

With business model becoming all encompassing -- extending to all traditional and non-traditional sectors -- the scope for growth is immense. Avenue Growth plans to on-board more than a million Growth Specialists on to its platform by 2020. There are plans to have a pan-Asia footprint.

What are the global geographies that you are looking as markets for Avenue Growth today?

As explained earlier Avenue Growth, today is present in more than 205 cities across India. The company wants to entrench itself strongly in the Indian market by adding many more Indian cities and a force of a million Growth Specialists by 2020. Plans are also afoot to make it a trans-national operation extending across Asia.

How are you funded? Are there any plans for VC funding?

We are self funded and have had a small angel round till now. But to achieve the ambitious targets of more than 1 million Growth Specialists on board by 2020, strong and deep presence in India across Tier1, Tier 2 cities right down to small towns and an aspiration of becoming a pan-Asian transnational operation, Avenue Growth would need major capital infusion and may soon go in for Series A funding or a sizeable seed funding round.

We are a nimble and extremely slow cash burn operation with high growth porspects. We would be breaking even in the next 10 months, making Avenue Growth one of the few start-ups that make a profit in just over a year of its founding. With a healthy top-line growth and profitability right from year one of founding I a m confident that Avenue Growth should garner good valuations from the VCs.

When would you be able to break even and what are your future plans?

As explained earlier we hope to be profitable in 10 months time and achieve a pan-Asia footprint.