The best founders have lived the problems they’re trying to solve.
Rajith Shaji, CEO and Co-founder at Volopay, had a similar experience. Straight out of graduation, Shaji started a Dev agency and scaled it to 50 - 60 people. Although they did a fantastic job tracking monthly revenue, spend monitoring was often put on the back burner. This painted a blurry need for Volopay in Shaji’s mind.
Fast forward to his next career stint, Shaji joined the Fintech space. Filling lengthy reimbursement forms bothered him after returning from business trips, mainly when accounting departments were globally scattered. The problem became clearer and came with an opportunity. He shared his thoughts with Rajesh Raikwar, CTO and Co-founder at Volopay.
The duo saw various startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face similar challenges in reconciling business expenses and tracking spend, subscriptions, and vendor payments. And the duo’s brainchild “Volopay” was born.
Although Shaji registered Volopay’s domain back in 2017, several regulations kept his idea far from reality. In 2019, regulations became a little flexible, and Volopay made its first appearance in the Singapore market.
Building a unified finance control centre for modern companies
Volopay simplifies expense management for companies and offers a unified view of spends in one place. The company provides corporate cards to clients and saves them from high forex charges incurred during international payments. Many businesses also utilise Volopay to automate accounting and manage accounts payable.
Shaji says,“Volopay is an ambitious project. To build an alternative to Volopay, you'd have to launch five different start-ups. We are building the control centre for modern companies for all their financial management needs.”
He adds, “Our platform is as easy and seamless to use for a 5-person company as it is for a 500-person company. We want to take our vision of a unified spend management platform to all companies across the world after our initial markets of APAC and MENA.” (Source: Business Standard)
Below are some of the benefits Volopay offers to its broad customer base.
- Corporate cards: Physical and virtual cards that help teams to send funds in real time and track expenses.
- Expense management: Automates financial processes and tracks every dollar that leaves your business. It empowers your team to focus on other critical tasks.
- Business account: Eliminates the need for multiple bank accounts, credit cards, money transfer accounts, and expense software by providing a unified solution for all.
- Accounts payable: Provides a single platform to manage vendor payouts, bill payments, multi-level approvals, and authorise invoices.
- Accounting automation: Safeguards accounting structure and automates processes from card swipe to closed books.
- Integrations: Streamlines financial processes by integrating accounting, collaboration, and security tools.
With a robust product offering, Volopay has become a trusted spend management platform for companies like MPL, Polygon, Livspace, CoinDCX, and HealthifyMe. Volopay has grown significantly in the past few years with the strong collaborative team work.
Since its seed funding in January 2019, Volopay has experienced hyper growth while clocking revenue growth of 42% MoM,” said Rohit Bhageria, Founding Member at Volopay.
While talking about revenue, we can’t miss sales. Let's look at what happens on the sales side of Volopay’s rocketship.
Scaling Volopay revenue growth
Volopay lifts its revenue growth with two arms: outbound and inbound sales. Outbound processes are more sales-centric. On the other hand, the marketing and sales teams align to set the inbound sales process up for success.
What happens on the outbound side
Volopay’s outbound team is divided into several verticals. Listing a few below:
- Data mining team is responsible to curate high-quality data
- Business development representatives initiate help qualify and setup up meetings
- Account executives share value propositions and onboard customers
What happens on the inbound side
The inbound team is also divided into several verticals:
- Marketing generates leads from online channels
- Inside sales representatives make the initial contact
- Account executives share value propositions and onboard customers
Take a quick look at the follow-up process
Volopay’s salespeople use email, calls, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and SMS to follow up with potential customers. The follow-up cycle varies for salespeople. It depends on the representative and the potential customers they assist.
Pro tip: WhatsApp is a better channel than email and phone calls for sales messaging. Learn more about why WhatsApp is a preferred follow-up channel for sales teams.
Volopay relies on CRM as a source of truth to manage customer databases. It enables the team to prioritise and visualise its pipeline better so as to serve customers with efficiency. Jeet Chokshi, Inside Sales Representative at Volopay, says “Whatsapp as a follow-up channel has proven successful for us.”
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Cooby integrates with CRM like Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and others, allowing teams to see Whatsapp sales conversations inside the CRM itself.
How Volopay’s leaders conduct sales coaching
Volopay’s sales teams meet bi-weekly to share their knowledge on what’s working for them and what’s not. The company does a fantastic job of ensuring that everyone is on the same page when it comes to sales.
“We do have a Sales Gyaan meet on a biweekly basis, where high-performing candidates share their knowledge on how they achieved what they achieved. Dileep Krishna, Global Director of Sales at Volopay, also delivers his creative inputs on how to improve further and help potential customers better,” says Chokshi.
During the sales cycle, salespeople use several channels to follow up and nurture prospects in the sales funnel. Customer relationship management (CRM) software tracks phone calls and emails, but it becomes tricky to monitor WhatsApp, primarily when salespeople use personal numbers.
Sales managers can benefit from monitoring and improving sales messaging on WhatsApp the same way they do for calls and emails.
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Driving exponential revenue growth through strategic partnerships
Take a look at some strategic partnerships the company has established to set their business up for success in present and future markets.
Strategic partnership with Visa’s Fintech Fast Track Program
Fintech Fast Track Program supports innovative financial solutions and services. With this partnership, Volopay becomes well equipped to issue their own Visa card to their clients in the APAC region. This partnership gives a winning edge to the company. It allows them to stand out among competitors who are just distributing cards.
It gives Volopay complete control over its product and creates a rounded financial stack for its customers.
Strategic partnership with State Bank of Mauritius (SBM) India
Volapay partnered with lending institutions such as ANZ Bank and Airwallex in Australia and NIUM Pte. Ltd in Singapore earlier to offer cards. In the same way, the company partnered with SBM to provide corporate credit cards in the Indian market.
In a conversation with Shaji, he said, “In some markets like India, only banks can do the issuance or some other regulated FI. So, while we can issue our own cards in Singapore the same isn’t feasible in India.”
Other notable partnerships
Volopay has established a robust partnership network by onboarding big names like Canva, Exotel, Zendesk, Freshworks, and others as partners. The partnership is based on rewards programs, brand awareness through collaborative events, or integrations. With these alliances, the company offers deals worth $50,000 to businesses that sign up with Volopay.
Below are some types of businesses that Volopay partners with.
- Marketplaces
- Lending marketplaces
- Ecosystem partners like VCs and accelerators
- Independent software vendors
- Accountants, CPA, CFO, and professional bodies
- Horizontal integrations
- Incorporation and corporate services company
- Software/hardware resellers
- Influencers and business consultants
Volopay offers multiple benefits and customised solutions to its partners. Check out the partner page to learn more about it.
Volopay’s expansion plan
Expense management was tricky for startups and SMBs long back, and it continues to be in this day and age. Big ERP players automated enterprise customers with end-to-end expense management solutions, but the problem remained for the startup ecosystem. Volopay plans to address this problem in markets worldwide.
Nirvikar Jain, Global Business Officer and Head of Alternate Channels at Volopay, explains, “This is a problem which is the same across most markets. At a top level, the only difference can be the cost of resources, which can be smaller for developing countries where people solve this problem by putting more people at work. On the other hand, it became an expensive problem for developed countries, and startups could not put in so much capital to solve it.” (Source: M2P)
Volopay solves this expense management problem with automated systems that increases efficiency and prevents frauds and misappropriations that are common in small companies. While the company is active in Singapore and Australia, Volopay plans to solve expense management for India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the upcoming months. The company also aspires to enter the Middle East in the foreseeable future.
The company has a robust go-to-market (GTM) playbook in India, where the team is highly focused on inside sales and the inbound acquisition funnel. Bhageria said, “We endeavour to strengthen the partnership network with leading B2B digital lending companies, accounting and corporate secretarial firms, and business accelerators.” (Source: CXOtoday). Bhageria views this as the primary market strategy for Volopay’s growth in India.
Shaji and Raikwar express their views on Volopay’s growth in India. The Co-Founders say, “The market opportunity is massive. With India churning out several unicorn-level enterprises every year, it’s indeed making a big wave on the global frontier. And this is only the beginning. Accelerating their growth would require an efficient expense management tool that is simple yet scalable, something that Volopay has always aimed for.”
What’s next
With an exceptional product offering and strong partnerships, Volopay aspires to take its expense management rocketship to the world. The company recently closed its Series A funding round by raising $29 Million from Winklevoss Twins and other investors.
The company plans to use these funds to expand into new markets and build and innovate new technologies that complement its existing product line. Volopay is on a growth trajectory that is trending upwards, and the company is likely to grow at a much faster rate with the recent funding and lower CAC in new markets.
Learn more about how businesses leverage WhatsApp to amp up sales productivity.
