From Rented Flat To A Multi-Crore Business: How Azmarq Technovation Built A 700-Client Strong Messaging Empire

Enterprises are increasingly taking innovative routes to reach out to their customers. In the digital age, not only SMS but many other channels like Whatsapp, email, voice mail, AI chatbot and many others are being tapped to engage with the customers. In such a growing space, many technology firms are cashing in the emerging demand. Azmarq Technovation is one such tech firm that counts many major brands of India across sectors as its clients. In a conversation with Bizz Buzz, Imteyaz Ansari, Founder, Azmarq Technovation said that the company is likely to see sound growth in coming years on the back of rising demand. The company is also actively leveraging AI in all its systems to make customer engagement more accurate. With a client base more than 700 across sectors, the company has already crossed Rs 20 crore revenue mark so far in the current financial year

Can you provide a brief overview about the operations of Azmarq Technovation? How did you start the company and what was the motivation behind setting it up?

Firstly, I have been working in this (customer engagement through messaging & other solutions) particular domain for last more than15 years. Before starting the company, I have worked with many established companies in this domain. It was a great experience working with those companies. I learned a lot of things about the market, how technical things work while sending SMS or about API. So, I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2016. I'm from the Bihar, and have a different mindset about doing business. I'm also the first-generation entrepreneur. I have to overcome all those factors. Then I & my cofounder, who is the CTO of the company, decided to start the current company. We worked very hard over many nights to build our infrastructure, and application right from the scratch, and we just launched our product into the market. Since I already had clients which have worked with me in previous company, I reached out to a couple of such clients. They supported me on our initial days, and they are still with us. So, the journey has been pretty exciting. From 2016 to till now, from the rented flat to our own office, this has been quite a journey. We have our headquarters in Noida and we also have an office in Mumbai as well.

What is the client base now? Was it tough on the initial days?

We started in 2016 by developing our entire client forms and launched our products in the market. Initially, we hardly got two to three clients. And it was really tough in the initial days. But over much hard work, we are here now. We currently have more than 700 clients. They are of all sizes. We count clients in NBFCs and PSUs. In fact, a few of the banks are also our clients. We are catering to almost all sectors.

Can you provide some glimpse of how the whole SMS service, whatsapp messaging and other related services work?

Take for example the SMS services that we provide. We call it a PSMS (premium short message service) application. When you visit some ATM or do some transactions from your (bank) account, you get the messages on your mobile phone depicting the debit or credit. These are the SMS, which are being triggered using an API. Similarly, when you do any shopping on the E-commerce platform, and you get your order updates. These things will happen only when they (the ecommerce firms) are using the API in their applications. Those APIs only can be provided by the company like us. After providing SMS services, we entered the WhatsApp services space four years back. We are also the official partner of Meta. We are doing more than 20 million WhatsApp delivery in a month right now. We also provide chatbot solutions to enterprises.

The global market for messaging services across various channels is growing very fast. As far as our revenue is concerned, we had a revenue of around Rs 12 crore in 2022. In 2023-24, we achieved a revenue of around Rs 15 crore. In the current financial year as of now, we have already crossed a revenue of Rs 20 crore. Currently, we are catering to more than 700 customers. Most of the customers are using our WhatsApp solutions, chatbot solutions, RCS solutions and others. We have also created e-commerce, quick commerce-related service offerings over WhatsApp. So, people can do the purchasing right on the WhatsApp from that particular brand. They can do the entire process like browsing the products, selecting them, Add to Cart kind of activities. They can also make the payment after which they get alerts and notification about that their delivery status. There's so much things that can be done right on the WhatsApp, which are enabling for customers.

How are you leveraging AI (artificial intelligence) in your services? Can you provide some views in this aspect?

We are introducing AI in our entire platform, which is likely to double or triple the ROI. Everyone knows that AI is the future. Everyone wants to experience the AI. They want to take their business to the next level. And of course, AI is definitely going to enhance everything. We are already middle of the work by introducing the AI on our platforms that will enhance the communication. This will enhance efficiency in all the services like a campaign, executions, and reporting among others.

Does the sensitive consumer data stay in India?

Yes, our data stays in the country. As we deal with many NBFCs and banks, we are compliant with all the regulations of RBI. We have all the data localisation compliances in place.

We see AI & generative AI disrupting a lot of technology startups, especially in the SaaS startup space. We have also seen AI bringing in changes in the conventional BPM model, relying on voice. How do you see AI and gen AI disrupting the messaging space?

We see AI enhancing the efficiency of the messaging domain across the world. AI can do a Whatsapp campaign, analyze the campaign response from the customer and many others. That is the reason, we are also trying to get AI into our system, which will enhance the communications or marketing or strategy in many other ways.

Have you raised capital so far? Are you planning to raise capital in the near future?

We have not raised capital so far. We are planning to raise capital but after getting a good revenue base. We are profitable and our internal accruals will take care of our expansion plans.