JOIN USBringing solutions for multiple issues on to one platform is the aim of most applications at the moment. There are many times when one is using email and needs to find more information on the parallel to get a task executed. Making this process easier is ‘Strike’, founded by Aishwarya Jain and Akshay Katyal, which brings all the tools one needs on one platform — email.
The duo started the startup in 2015 and the application has transformed a lot since its initial days. “We got together with a simple idea of running business tools inside emails. We used to hack and pack applications into email applications,” says Aishwarya.
The duo, who worked at a startup before this, used their prior knowledge of requirements of sales professionals to create ‘Strike’. “I remember using multiple web-based tools to derive information for emails at work and discussed this with Akshay. Our thoughts matched and ‘Strike’ was born,” he says. While sending emails, a sales professional usually needs to know the background of the person he is interacting with, the nature of the company and the solutions they need. “For this a number of applications would be running in the background which slows the whole process down and can be confusing too,” adds Aishwarya.
The team had to understand how the sales life-cycle works in different organisations. “This included the processes they follow and how we could cut down on the time an average person spends on these process,” he details.
Akshay adds that the application aims to reduce manual labour.
The application was launched for the Android market initially. Over time the duo realised that while the shift to the mobile has been massive, professionals still prefer using the web on a computer. “Thus we launched the web version to make it easier for professionals,” adds Akshay. The application has been adapted by organisations across countries like Singapore, India, Russia, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands and US. “Our observations have been many — we have noticed that an average person saves six hours per week in managing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and following up with clients, has logged seven times more data into the CRM, and has been able to close sales twice as fast,” informs Aishwarya.
The challenges have been many for the duo in spreading the popularity of the application. “India is a price-sensitive market and selling the application at the right price is a challenging affair,” says Akshay, to which Aishwarya adds that “getting the product to be market-fit is always a challenge”.