How Qlicket is Growing up to 25% MoM (Interview with Vivek Kumar, CEO)

– Hello! Who are you, and what business did you start?

My name is Vivek Kumar; I am the CEO and co-founder of Qlicket. We bridge the communication gap between frontline employees and their managers, creating a more cohesive workforce with less turnover. We do this by mounting interactive kiosks throughout the workplace, running survey questions on them, and using the insights to boost employee retention, satisfaction, and engagement.

– What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

One of our prospective customers at a Fortune 500 said that his number-one pain was retaining his frontline talent—specifically, package handlers. He saw a feedback collection tool that we had built in the hospitality space, then asked if we could create something similar for his deskless workforce.

– Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and developing the first version of Qlicket

A customer would look at our offering and say, “What if your solution could do this?” We think that the most valuable tool in design is talking to customers, then building.

– Describe the process of launching the business.

For the latest interaction, we acquired introductions to customers who might have pain points in retaining frontline talent, improving Glassdoor reviews, enhancing their working environment, or a similar employee satisfaction issue. Then, we began piloting our solution with them. After a few successful pilots, we entered into recurring contracts with customers and quickly expanded to additional locations.

– Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Our main value proposition has been reducing employee turnover. In hourly and blue-collar industries, firms can expect churn rates of 100% or more. In other words, turnover is so high that companies hire and lose the equivalent of their entire workforce every year.

A few years ago, Gallup and others found that 78% of this turnover has nothing to do with wages. Employees in these sectors quit due to preventable factors, such as overwork, lack of recognition from management, and low opportunity for career advancement. Our system allows employees to voice their concerns with managers. The mere act of listening to employees decreases turnover, but customers with the most success have implemented policies that directly address employees’ problems in the workplace.

We also created an interactive dashboard that allows customers to post announcements, custom survey questions, and other content on the kiosks.

– How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Today, we are growing recurring revenue at rates of 10% to 25% month-over-month. We are serving Fortune 500 companies and solving genuine workforce pain points for them. We want to continue focusing on customer delight and improving our offering.

– Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Make something that people want. If your performance is truly solid, you can show a simple growth chart of your revenue that goes up and to the right! This is easier said than done.

– What platform/tools do you use for your business and why?

We use numerous SaaS applications that help us to be more productive; of course, we do this at price points that make sense for an early-stage startup. LinkedIn, Twitter, G Suite, Slack, Atlassian, Amazon Web Services, and others are highly useful to us.

– What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

We have been heavily influenced by Traction, written by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. The book is an extended guide for growth marketing. It walks readers through nineteen “traction channels” ranging from Google Ads to publicity stunts, objectively weighing the costs and benefits of each channel. The goal of the book is to help entrepreneurs ignore their previous biases about particular channels, instead of allowing them to choose a growth marketing strategy that works for their business.

– Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Be resilient. Building something from scratch is extremely hard. And make something that people want and are willing to pay for!

– Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We are hiring mostly for positions in India. We are looking for an ETL Developer, Database Query Assistant, Java Developer, Android App Developer, and two Technical Support Engineers. 

– Where can we go to learn more?

Visit qlicket.com and add us on LinkedIn to learn more!