Akhil founded Xena Intelligence, a SaaS platform that helps businesses increase their Amazon sales thanks to clever data analytics and algorithms. It is a subscription-based business model with a fixed fee plus a proportion of the growth it can bring to the client’s e-commerce sales channel.
Akhil established the SaaS platform Xena Intelligence, which helps companies boost their Amazon sales. A set charge and a portion of the growth we can bring to the client’s e-commerce sales channel make up this subscription-based business model. Their monthly revenue is $15,000 and their client’s monthly transactions total $250,000.
What are you currently working on and who are you?
I am Akhil Suresh Nair, the founder and CEO of Xena Intelligence in Boston, Massachusetts. I am thirty years old. I have an MBA from Babson College and a background in engineering.
A SaaS platform called Xena Intelligence employs clever data analytics and a unique algorithm to help companies sell more products on Amazon. The firm was founded by myself, and I also serve as its CEO. We use a subscription-based business model for customers, which includes a set charge and a share of the expansion we can bring to their e-commerce sales channel.
What is your background, and how did you come up with this idea?
I am an MBA-trained first-generation immigrant with an engineering background. I started Xena Intelligence as a side project when I was managing an SMB marketing consulting business. I developed the idea after seeing there was a big market demand for Amazon vendors to be competitive there. The process of successfully evaluating data and managing advertising campaigns is difficult and time-consuming. The main goal of Xena Intelligence was to completely automate the procedure in order to employ certain algorithms to maximize upcoming internet sales. Because I am familiar with the needs of small businesses, I felt motivated to develop this tool to help them compete more effectively against huge organizations that have far higher advertising budgets.
I decided to focus only on Xena rather than expanding my consulting firm since it had more potential and the chance to help more businesses, which made the idea more scaleable.
How did you turn a concept into a finished product?
At first, we offered small businesses marketing consulting services. We found that there were no e-commerce administration platforms for small firms on the market during our work with SMBs. This inspired us to develop a product that would help our clients sell more on Amazon by utilizing clever data analytics and marketing campaign techniques.
Initial challenges included persuading enough proprietors of small businesses to trust us with overseeing their Amazon accounts in spite of our inexperience. We were lucky to gain our first few customers, which enabled us to validate our theory and develop the finished product.
What marketing techniques did you use to grow your company?
We aimed to promote ourselves as e-commerce market leaders and target small firms by actively engaging in regional business chamber events and conducting webinars and information sessions.
We paid great attention to our customers and went above and beyond their expectations since we understood that small businesses significantly relied on word-of-mouth advertising. When our inbound marketing strategy started to show results and we started to get plenty of enquiries, we started to gain traction.
What are you doing right now? What are your long-term goals?
We now manage over 250 SKUs on Amazon for four clients, who collectively generate $250,000 in monthly income. Our firm makes $15,000 every month in income. Five people make up our team both at home and abroad. We also belong to the current cohort of the MassChallenge.
Future goals include growing our clientele of small businesses and adding clients at the corporate level.
What have you learned the most since founding Xena Intelligence?
The most important thing I’ve learnt is to persist.
All business owners battle against self-doubt on a daily basis. Long-term engagement produces a thick epidermis and a readiness to face the myriad other obstacles that will definitely appear.
What were the toughest obstacles you overcame? What were your biggest mistakes?
The biggest challenge I had, in my opinion, was persuading myself, my close friends, and my family that the job I was doing was important and worthy.
Since anybody can readily point out weaknesses in your business concept and you are overwhelmed with suggestions for how to advance your startup, it may feel in the early stages that your startup is nothing more than a pipe dream. It may be quite terrifying to keep going in the face of all challenges.
In addition to all of this, it might be challenging for first-generation immigrants to understand the procedures and social quirks required for success in this nation.
What equipment and sources would you recommend?
One of the SaaS products I’ve used that makes it easier to manage a virtual project with team members from all over the world is Zoom. Other SaaS technologies I’ve used include HubSpot, LinkedIn, Quickbooks, Hootsuite, AWS, Airtable, Google Table, and Google Analytics.
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