Building a Strong Partner Ecosystem: Lessons from Ashish Kamotra from Titan Workspace

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Now let's get started with today's episode. But before we dive into our interview, let me ask you a few questions. As a Microsoft partner and member of the IAMCP, what kind of approach are you taking to scale your business? And how are you developing your partner relationships to achieve those goals? Finding the right partner can be challenging, but can also be rewarding.

In fact, according to a channel profitability study, Microsoft partners derive margins 19% higher than the next closest competitor. That's a huge difference, and it shows the power of partnering. So how do you leverage the Microsoft partner network in IAMCP to support your partnerships? And how do you ensure success for your customer? These are some of the questions we'll explore in this podcast with the help of our guests, a recent P2P Award, APAC finalist, who is also an expert in partnering.

He'll share stories, challenges, and successes, and give you practical tips and advice on how to partner for success. Are you ready to join us on this journey? Then stay tuned because we have a great show for you today. Our guest is Ashish Kamotra the CEO at Titan Workspace, a Microsoft 365 app that unleashes enterprise productivity by improving the usability of M365 and Microsoft Teams. Titan Workspace was developed by Adapt Software India, a Microsoft modern work solutions partner that specializes in SharePoint, Power Platform, and M365, Teams, and Microsoft Viva.

Let's hear what he has to say. Welcome, Ashish, to the podcast today. Thank you for joining us.

So we started this company way back, I think, 2 decades back in India as a SharePoint consulting company. And then over a period of time, we graduated to Microsoft Modern Work, Solution Partners, and now delivering solutions globally. Also, we have Type Workspace as our ISP product, so which is now an area where I'm spending a lot of my time in promoting and selling that product globally. So I look after mainly operations and sales and the product side of the of the company. And then we have teams, in US as well as in India, both to take care of customers.

And then, right, sitting at the other side of the table. Right? So, and then I was very fascinated with, the IT trends coming up and the product to the softwares, and then decided to start my own company. And that's why I jumped into it without being a technical person. But I was aware that, IT is very challenging, and that that's a role I wanted for myself, actually.

Right? Not one. And each has its own unique, music, alignment. Right? So you have to pick up if you pick up one, so you have to make sure that you don't go outside the boundaries of that rock. Right? And that's the scientific way of playing Indian music. See, for example, if you look at, Western Orchestra Symphonies, everybody is following notes. Right?

While a group of it is performing. But if you look at Indian classical music, performed on a stage, you'll see that there's nothing written in front of anybody. So everybody is following a set, which is defined by the classical music, and that that's the fun part of it. Right?

Sits on top of SharePoint, and, basically, it is a document management and workflow automation app that facilitates, adoption of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint with its very unique framework. Right? In addition to that, we are Microsoft co sell partner and also modern work solution partner. Adapt Software in India is basically the name of a company which has two functions. 1, a modern work practice where we deliver SharePoint based solutions globally as a project, and then it has Titan Workspace as a development center, as a product company.

And, yeah. So I oversee both those both those areas.

It's a whole lot of journey from since then. Right? So these customers, they, they gave us a couple of ideas that if SharePoint is so complex and every customer must spend a lot of money in terms of customizations or trainings and make it working, why not to build a product that simplifies it so that at least the SMB's, which don't have those kind of deep pockets, can leverage that platform very well. Right? So, typically, if you look back in, you know, 2010 or 2006, 2008, those kind of era, SharePoint was a luxury.

You know? A big guys would buy servers, data centers, and, you know, SharePoint admins, and $1,000,000 worth of consulting and all. And we knew that if you know, when Office 365 came, we knew that it is bundled with even one single user now. Right? So even if you have $2 worth of an office you know, Microsoft, you still have a SharePoint.

Right? So the opportunity was intense. So we knew that SMB's would have it, but it will be challenging for them to unbox SharePoint. Right? So that's how the Titan Workspaces was created.

And we focused mainly on 2 areas. One was simplifying the document management experience, and the other was automation of your internal business processes using SharePoint. So these are the two core areas that we simplified and, precisely the way we thought, we are seeing the results coming up exactly. So we have customers which are now leveraging our technology to maximize the benefits of Microsoft 365. And that's that's what we love doing.

In terms of our channel and partners, you know, when you create a product as an ISV, from, like, minimum viable product, what we call MVP, you have to go through a journey of product market fit. Right? Which is takes sometimes two years. In our case, took about two and a half years, three years. What we did when we were doing the product market fit, we continued engaging our channel partners, showcasing Titan to them.

And we were we knew that they will not be ready to sell it, but we we continue to to showcase our strength, our vision to these partners that, Titan Workspace can solve a lot of their problems. And over a period of time, the partner community got nurtured. I mean, even they they were not selling initially, but off late, we have seen a lot of partners joined our partner program, and that's how how we are growing now.

Right? So this transition was very hard, but we successfully, kind of work on that. As far as expansion to global, so, you know, we knew that, till the time the product market fit is achieved, there's no point in expanding to different geographies. So what we did, we initially focused on Asia and India. That's where we were very strong.

Right? And, we initially acquired almost more than 70, 80 clients here and make sure that the customers are happy. And we understood how to sell, how to position it, and, what's the right price for the product. Right? So, that was the first milestone that we achieved.

And after that, we expanded to US. And when we when we entered US, we kind of, we knew that what is the right messaging, what is the right you know, what kind of features are in demand. Of course, both geographies have different, set of challenges. Right? So India has a different set of challenges when you're selling, and US has different set of challenges you're you're selling.

Right? So but one thing was common that Microsoft operates everywhere same. Right? So that was the consistency that we could leverage. Their structure is same everywhere. Right? So if you're an ISV, one country, you understand how to operate in the other country. I think that's that's one good part. So expanding to new territory other than your home home turf is always challenging. Building new customers, building partners, That's not easy.

We, I would say that we are still at a very early stage of our product journey and the sales journey, even though we are now almost touching almost 4 years since we, from, from the first, you know, minimum viable product to where we are today. Right? So, but we we think that another one year we need to make make sure that our partners are totally aligned in different geographies with us. Right? So now with with lot of, visibility that is coming to us, we we are seeing some inbound partner requests coming.

We are partners would like to know more about the product and that's how it is.

And we took a path where we went to existing SharePoint services customers. And so look, for this use case, you are paying us, let's say, $20,000. How about the same use case I have developed as an MVP, and that you can pay us $2 per user per month. And, you can try. If it doesn't work, probably you can switch to services.

Right? So these kind of small baby steps we took initially with couple of clients. And we were fortunate that we had a footprint of existing SharePoint customers where we could go, and we understood them and that we leveraged those relationships to to to, you know, take off. Interesting part starts now. You acquire these clients, 5 or 6.

Right? So but you know that your product is not complete. Okay? It's not meeting end to end cycle of the operations of the, you know, there are a lot of components to be fixed. It could be buggy. You know? It it it could have a lot of challenges. But but you still work with those clients trying to convince them to use that. Right?

Then you start getting the feedback. And when you start getting the feedback, you realize that there's a long way to go before you even scale up. Right? So the product market fit in my understanding is complete only when you sense that the repeatable business sense has come. So now you you have repeat sales coming from some of the use cases.

Right? So when you sell initially, you are all over the product. Right? You have and you focus on a lot of areas that just to understand, you know, which one would click to the clients.

And that took us almost 18 months to realize that out of 20 features that we thought were the hero features, client would need only 5 or 6. And that and that journey is, I think, most critical for a product market fit. Right? So today, if I compare my sales pitch, 3 years back, I was talking about 10 features when I opened my sales pitch to a customer. And today, I talk about 3 features. That's that's a transition that's happened. Right?

Because what we understood was that if the product has not completed the product market fit and you tend to scale up your sales, it will not work. And in at least in our case, it didn't work. Right?

Right? Because the sales will come to scale up. You know? In in ISV business, the first twenty sales is done by founder has to be done by founder. Nobody can can do that. Right? So if you can't sell first, Anthony, nobody else is gonna do that. Right? So that's the learning, I mean, I hope that answers some of your questions. Right?

Right? The partner would get some opportunity and he'll work with you, scope and deliver it and finish. Right? So typically that's a business model. But when it comes to an ISV partnership, ISV partnership means the solution sales for a particular use case, right, which is which may or may not be very well defined and understood by customer.

The challenge with this model is that partners can bring you an opportunity, but they cannot sell initially. And as an ISV, it's very difficult for us to train initially the sales team of partners as good as we we do. Right? That means the role of partner is merely to bring us a lead. And then we we nurture that lead.

We work with that partner in solutioning. We do the pilot. We do everything. We do implementation. So in our case, what has worked is, we never burdened our partners with any sort of services or anything other than just the client management.

So our partners don't invest in technical. They don't invest in presales. They don't invest in after sales support. All they do is they have understood the product, how to bundle it with Microsoft 365, what kind of solution it is, and what kind of customers do we need, what's our target audience market. Right?

So we operate typically between a customer, you know, which has 100 users to about 700 users. That's where our sweet spot is. So a lot of our partners, we tell initially that, you know, these are the kind of customers, industries, and the use cases that you should hunt. And if you find one, bring it to us, and then we'll take it forward with the with the cost, you know, partner.

So partnered program is another important area here that we have a very structured partner program for product. It has full description of what the program is, different level of partnerships, what are the partner commitments, what is it that we can do, what is it the partner is supposed to do. And that's very clear, clearly, defined document, right, with very clear margins, how much sales and how much margins. And also that's also another aspect of ISVs that they should build, a a detailed partner program that can help them to at least, align the partner expectations very well with your sales GTL.

So we have to make sure that the partner's reputation with the client is at stake And the trust between us and the partner has to be utmost in terms of transparencies and support. We work with two type of we come across two type of partners when we go to market. One, those are modern work services partners, and they understand how the consulting works and how, you know, solutioning would work and typical nuances of the project management and things like that. Right? The second set of partners are pure CSP's.

So they are just selling Microsoft licenses, and they don't have any project management practices or Modern Works, you know, consulting practices. But they have tons of clients which need solutions like us. Right? So our approach of working with both these type of partners is different because the partner which is, you know, which which has a knowledge of project management, consulting, and he has a model of practice, he understands how the projects are executed and, you know, how the customer management and the client expectations are met.

But the partner, which has not so deep experience in execution and consulting, sometimes get frustrated because, you know, when the product gets installed and, you know, customer expectations see, you are a product company, so you have to operate within a framework of a technology. Customers keep asking us tons of new features. So we can't build every feature for every client. Okay? So product has a road map.

Right? Next quarter, two quarters down the line, what is coming. Though we can commit to our customers that, okay, today we don't have it, but a quarter later, we'll deliver it. But sometimes partners will push us. Right? That he wants this to be now. Right? So these kind of things, they do come. But I would say that, we need to fill in the gaps. Sometimes we work aggressively to fill the gaps on presales, right, in an engagement.

Sometimes the gap is filled on client expectations, setting up the right client expectations, and also educating our partner what is the right way to proceed. Sometimes we fill the gap in terms of project management, seeing that the partner doesn't have anybody who's competent enough to do the project management role. You know? So we take over that role. So I think there are a lot of failure.

There's no one single answer to your question, but I think that every partner is different. Scale is different. Right? And, also, their teams are different. So we kind of, we are still learning.

I would say it I wouldn't say that we have mastered anything of that, even though today we are working globally with about 30 plus resellers, out of which 10 are from IAMCP community in different countries. It's a mix of CSP's, MSP's, and distributors. I hope that answers some of your questions that you tried to ask me. Right?

And the partner side is also looking for that return on investment too, because that's gonna drive customer satisfaction as well as revenue. So do you do an ROI analysis with your customers for each implementation, or can you tell us a little bit about how how you, approach that particular, question that partners and customers have?

You know, that's the first step we have to overcome that how much, you know, time is needed vis-a-vis what kind of a return the partner is going to get if he invest that that kind of time. Right? So, so we we kind of answer that in multiple ways. Generally, I don't approach it with money. Money will come. Right? I tell my partners, look. You have 100 Microsoft 365 customers. Right? And you have sold them tons and tons of licenses.

So every year, you go back to a client and the client questions the adoption. And at that time, your renewal is vulnerable. Right? Client can switch to, you know, some other CSP if you're not adding value. You forget about the price.

So if Titan can deliver some of that, you know, use cases and help in adoption, that means from a mere commodity reseller, you would graduate to a value added solution reseller. Right? And that stickiness is going to help you a lot in retaining your customer to whom you can upsell cross sell some other products. In this process, you will make some money on Titan as well because we have very high margins that we pay to our partners, and that's recurring throughout the life of the client. So that's a bigger ROI for a client, you know, partner.

So I think my conversations are never focused on how much money they are going to make. My conversations are always focused on what is it that the Titan Workspace can add value to partner's business in terms of creating a long lasting client relationships, making sure that the client sees that partner as a value valuable partner to them rather than just supplying the licenses. And I think that's where we drive our GTM with our partners. Right? So this is how my based on my learning and how I communicate to them. Right?

So I thought you explained that very well. But in closing, what advice would you give to other ISVs, to build and grow partnerships like the ones you've done, that where, again, you're going to be successful. You're you have returning business, and you're seeing the growth of your company as as well.

I never expected that the first 30 sales, anything would come from partner. Even though, you know, we got some clicks initially with, you know, business came from partners. But we never focused on chasing partners to sell. We always continued to educate our partners. So IAMCP was one such great platform where wherever the IAMCP meeting would happen, I would, you know, take an opportunity sometimes as a paid sponsor or something just to go and showcase what Titan Workspace can do without expecting that any partner would give me a lead or, you know, an opportunity tomorrow.

Right? And then we created a partner information system through different channels where we are educating our partners about something new coming right. Over a period of time, we have seen that partners have understood that this is consistently growing and he is seeing lot of new logos coming from our announcements. And something that has now started working is that some partners which initially thought that they may or may not sell Titan, but now when they're seeing that, recently Titan has acquired some of their clients directly. You know?

That's kind of a momentum that will now now is more trustworthy moment because their own client is happy and there's a product that they think that they can add value. So now this is a time so it's a slow journey. Right? So the mistake I did initially also was with 10 customers, we expand try to expand the partner network. And we burned a lot of money, to be honest.

But, the the ROI was absolutely nothing. Partners like the product, but since the product market fit wasn't completed, their effort and our effort went waste. And that's a mistake. And and then we totally stopped it. And then we said, we'll go back to partner community once we have a repeatable business, and we understand how to sell and how to communicate to client.

And that took us almost 50 clients' logos to get to that point where I can confidently say that now we are we have some sense of a repeatable business. We have also know that what kind of a partner. So today, every month I get about five or six partner requests that they are interested. Out of these five or six, I actually politely tell these partners that we are not yet ready for you. So it is not that they are they want to work with us, which is great, but we think that, we need some more time to be able to do some more confidence building with the existing partners before we expand.

So that's my my learning and my advice to other ISV's that, it's a partnership is a slow game. Right? And, generally, we have seen that partners will jump on a moving train. They will not help you to kick start the train. Okay? That's a summary. Right?

Does that does that make sense, that question?

Okay? So that's a sign where we would say that our association with the product journey and the go to market with partner has some reached to a point where we can take a call very shortly, when to pivot and, when to scale up with full throttle. Right? So so that's we are at that. But it took a a lot of time to to get to this point. Right?

So expectations of everybody is that our growth should be super. But I would say that SaaS and that's my advice to partners that if you get into a SaaS, if you build a product which is SaaS offered, it has a compounding effect. So if your customer retention is good, that means in couple of years due to compounding, your sales will grow 200%, 300%, 400%. And that's that's beauty of the SaaS. You know?

It's only the 1st, three to four years when you are still early and product market fit and those kind of things, which kind of don't make any sense from the very high expectation VC kind of environment. Right? But over a period of time, everything would, get to that point, I guess.

Let me ask you this just, you know, last question is how, how can people find out and, find out about you and connect with you?

And he's not, you know, as, I think you've heard me say this this term amongst of ourselves, Anthony. He's not a world beater about, you know, having to grow a 100% every quarter. It's about let's make sure that this is done effectively and done right. And the money will come over a period of time. And I really appreciated that that, that measured approach because having been in the ISV space early on in my career, you know, ours was always go sell, sell, sell, and we'll fix we'll fix it later. And that doesn't always work.

And just, you know, for our audience, just the 5 areas, because we asked myself, can you give us some tips, on how you would recommend other ISVs and product developers to do that? I'll just share this here because I thought that was so on point. You know, have get those initial customers and and to the point you brought up just how the what was the first twenty or so, you know, by the founder, you know, is leading that sales effort. But then, you know, to piggyback on that, he's you know, he mentioned take the baby steps. Right?

You know, and and leverage with, you know, your existing relationships. He emphasized number 3, just the importance of getting good feedback and then iterating on that feedback according to your product road map. Number 4, it's not complete until you have a repeatable business and how he mentioned just the importance of being able to sell it over and over and over again. Not 5 times, not 6 times, not 10 times, but getting, you know I mean, he said the first twenty, you know, by the founder. In the story though, he said, look, we didn't get we didn't start expanding until, you know, we got to 70, and then, you know, we look to scale it.

And then last but not least, just the importance of refining the pitch. And I thought it was funny, and I know you and I can appreciate this because, you know, being, you know, as a marketing agency, everybody wants to give you their, you know, 5 to 10 reasons why that's, you know, they should buy, you know, their solution. But he said, no, no. We had to get ours down to when I wasn't communicating, you know, the 6, quote, unquote, main benefits, but I got it down to 2 to 3.

And I really appreciated that, especially because I know some of the challenges we, you know, we work with, you know, in helping, you know, our customers. So I thought that was really, really solid.

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