'Entrepreneurship is challenging in India, but growth is equally faster'

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Vaneeta Punchvedi | 30 Oct, 2015
Being an entrepreneur anywhere in the world is not an easy task. It's filled with potholes, roadblocks and massive mountains to cross everyday. It's even more challenging in India as we are faced with several restrictions. But success is equally faster here when you find a way to work around the kinks. Staying agile, flexible, and focusing on building a great culture, a great team and great product is key to making it big, said Vinod Muthukrishnan CEO of CloudCherry, in a interview with SME Times.

Excerpts of the interview...

Please tell us something about your organization "Cloudcherry"
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Cloudcherry is a real-time, Omni-channel Customer Experience Management product that helps customer-facing brands track, measure & improve Customer Delight.

Cloudcherry offers a customizable, easy-to-use SaaS product that brands can use to measure key metrics like the Net Promoter Score and the unique Customer Delight score, discover actionable insights and Analytics for Customer Experience improvement & address issues as they happen at any touch point of interaction with the customer. With Cloudcherry, a brand can go live in just 30 minutes across a global network of locations and multiple touch points of interaction.

How you started it and what encouraged you to start this company?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Customer Experience was and is turning to be one of the most important drivers of long-term brand success, with more brands today focusing and investing on CX initiatives.

There was no one product that offered this as a core solution, which is why we started Cloudcherry. And it was based on a simple, yet relevant vision -
to bring brands closer to their customers, connect with their aspirations and help them in delivering delightful brand experiences.

Please tell us something about Customer Experience Management product company?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Every business spends tons of money on marketing for customer acquisition. But a newly acquired customer is profitable only when the brand engages them on a sustained, recurring basis. Marketing translates to profits only when brands consistently deliver Delightful Customer Experiences.

That's why there's Cloudcherry - to bring brands closer to their customer's aspirations by providing a Real-Time tool to track, measure and improve Customer Delight - thereby creating loyal evangelists and true Life Time Value for the business.

Delivering a delightful customer experience is something that is required for every business that handles customers or clients. With our product, brands and custodians get to constantly stay on top and manage these experiences, act on issues as they happen, make changes in real-time and enhance their brand image.

CloudCherry is working with various big names of industry; does Cloudcherry also work with SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises)?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Absolutely. One of the unique things about our product is that we cater to a business no matter how big or small they are - all they need to be is one that really cares about knowing their customer's needs.
We already work with many small & medium brands in several countries. Also being a Do-it-yourself product, we give a small business owner the ease and flexibility of using our product in a way that they believe works best - and benefit from cutting-edge analytics and insights that typically only a large enterprise could get.

How Cloudcherry is different from its competitor in this cutting-edge market?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: We really set ourselves apart as being the first real-time, omni-channel product that allows a brand to understand customer experiences across their journey - because today, customers and brands interact in several different touch points.

We offer brands a simple, easy-to-use solution that they have complete control over - to manage, edit, modify and deploy as they wish necessary for their brand.

Being a product, we offer the flexibility, scalability and agility of expanding our solution across an organization, just as fast as they grow.

Most importantly, Analytics is one of the hottest requirements for businesses today, and we offer the best Customer Experience Analytics in Real-time and deliver insights as they are identified on our visual dashboard.

"Cloudcherry" got the selection for Nasscom Emerge50 as one of the most innovative Top 50 Emerging IT Product companies. How does it feel?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Awesome! NASSCOM has become quite a recognized body today in promoting startups, and amongst thousands of startups across the country, it's great to be honoured as one amongst the top 50 in India. Additionally, we have also been honoured as the best IT Startup by CII in 2014 and Startup to watch for in 2015 by CIO Review. We are also proud to be part of the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator program, one of the top accelerator programs in the country, if not globally.

Do you think being an entrepreneur is an easy task in India? Your views
Vinod Muthukrishnan: Being an entrepreneur anywhere in the world is not an easy task. It's filled with potholes, roadblocks and massive mountains to cross everyday. It's even more challenging in India as we are faced with several restrictions. But success is equally faster here when you find a way to work around the kinks. Staying agile, flexible, and focusing on building a great culture, a great team and great product is key to making it big.

What are future plans?
Vinod Muthukrishnan: We are looking to expand our global presence with a focus on the US SMB segment. Additionally, we are also looking to really cement our position as a market leader in India, especially in the retail and BFSI sectors.