Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. It's guest time on the show and I'm very pleased to have with me as my guest, actually, a repeat guest, Gaurav Khandelwal, Founder and CEO of ChaiONE. Gaurav, welcome back to The Business Makers Show.

Gaurav: Russ, it's always a pleasure being here.

Russ: You bet. Well, I know we're gonna talk about something special, a special development with the company but, before we get to that, for those that, perhaps, didn't see prior interviews, tell 'em about ChaiONE.

Gaurav: ChaiONE's a mobile agency. We do mobile strategy and development for enterprise corporations. In other words when you see an app on the iPhone, iPad or Android, developed for a corporation, more than likely, it's us doing the work.

Russ: Okay, all right. That's a cool overview, so bring us up-to-date. What's the new, exciting announcement?

Gaurav: Well, you know that for the last three years we've been a services company.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: It's been an exciting growth. We've added. We're up to 25 people.

Russ: Wow.

Gaurav: But this past summer we started to think about, "What's gonna be our legacy, you know? How do we really take ourselves to the next level?" And one of those things was to build a product.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: You know we had learned a lot over the years, you know, working with our clients and customers.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: So we launched a new division of ChaiONE, called ChaiONE Labs.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: And Game Plan is a new product.

Russ: Game Plan.

Gaurav: Game Plan --

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: out of ChaiONE Labs.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: The history is such that we did some work with some major oil and gas companies in town over the last nine months or so and we realized that they had a massive problem in getting their sales collateral over to the sales people in time. Now these companies have anywhere between 15,000 to 20,000 types of collateral.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: I'm talking PowerPoints, PDF's, presentations and cell files.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: You know they have blocked companies over the years. These documents are stored in SharePoint, Dropbox, Box.net, SAP, you name it.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: So to get all of that stuff in one place is - it's quite a challenge.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: So what we did was build an app that, on the website, aggregates all of these documents --

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: and brings them down to the iPad.

Russ: Ahh! Okay, okay, so a professional salesperson with this company and, obviously, you've turned it into a product and offer it to almost any company now, has the ability to organize their sales presentation collateral and then have it available on an iPad application.

Gaurav: In real-time.

Russ: Yeah, I gotta tell ya, Gaurav that the iPad, to me, really took off the first time I realized how cool it was to make, like, a sales presentation at a restaurant, even. I mean, you're just suddenly there and it has great graphics and great capabilities, so you - you probably accomplished two things for this customer. You got your collateral organized and you brought it up to the new presentation medium.

Gaurav: The idea is not so unique.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: There is apps like Box.net and Dropbox that do that.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: Now what's different about us is we're not tied to any storage type of service.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: We are storage-agnostic.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: So we can really bring them all together, down to one device and then we give you line-of-sight, which means when you touch the device --

Russ: yeah?

Gaurav: When you swipe it, when you open a document, when you spend some time on a certain slide, we capture all of that data.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: So now I see Amok can say, "Well, you know, we spent $5 million last year on marketing and we produce these hundred different types of brochures and PDF's, who's using that?"

Russ: Right, okay, well --

Gaurav: and when and where?

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: And why is something more effective than the other?

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: So right now they have no line-of-sight into that.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: With Game Plan they now do.

Russ: Okay, wow, so your target audience for this product is any sales organization, right?

Gaurav: That's exactly right.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: Any sales or marketing organization can use this

Russ: Wow, wow, and so what's the status, is it cooked and ready-for-market or is it already out there, are people using it?

Gaurav: Yeah, we have a closed beta --

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: for the last two months where we had clients that we invited to use --

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: use the product.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: The feedback has been great.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: The product is right now open for folks to go to gameplanhq.com and sign up for an invite for a beta.

Russ: Wow.

Gaurav: We will contact them and get them onboard the program.

Russ: Okay, that - that was gamehq.com?

Gaurav: That's correct.

Russ: All right, cool.

Gaurav: Www.gameplanhq.com.

Russ: Okay, cool, and so if I hadda company that lotsa sales people, uhh, I don't right now. I have a radio show and I'm the sales guy but I would - I would come and just purchase it like a regular software product or is it - does it come with you managing the data and the background, I guess, managing everything since you report back usage, right?

Gaurav: Well, funny you ask. We are targeting larger organizations, where this is a bit of a problem.

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: We have a subscription plan where they $50.00-a-user-a-month to have access so there's no huge set-up fees, you can cancel, you know, whenever you want, there's not a big licensing cost.

Russ: Okay.

Gaurav: And also to make it easy for companies to buy-in --

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: for $100.00-a-month, for $99.00-a-month, they can get Game Plan and a free iPad.

Russ: Oh, wow, cool.

Gaurav: So there's no capital expenditure.

Russ: Cool, okay, so I would assume, from, sort of, a development-services company to migrate to a product company, it's pretty cool because you - you should be able, with success, have a recurring revenue stream, which I think gives all people that have operated project-oriented companies a degree of comfort, looking into the future.

Gaurav: Absolutely, you know, services is - is fun --

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: it's - it's complex --

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: Uhh, product --

Russ: Right.

Gaurav: really gives you the ability to propel yourself to - to even greater heights --

Russ: Great.

Gaurav: that the services may, or may not, in a short time-span.

Russ: Great.

Gaurav: So we're just hoping that everything we have learned over the last few years we can deliver to our clients in an affordable way.

Russ: Cool, cool, so before I let you go, though, but how are you getting it out there? I mean do you have a - a sales organization, do you - have you connected or allied yourself with one of these repping firms? How are ya doin' it?

Gaurav: Well, one is, uhh - uhh, we have a very good partner in Verizon Wireless.

Russ: Ahh!

Gaurav: Uhh, they have 1,500 of their salespeople that are going to be using the product --

Russ: Wow.

Gaurav: and taking it to market. We also have signed up with a few sales outsourcing companies that - that do sales as part of their business --

Russ: Cool.

Gaurav: and of course our website and our own salespeople.

Russ: Cool, well, good luck with that. I mean it's exciting to see the product line expanding for sure.

Gaurav: Great, thank you so much.

Russ: You bet. That's Gaurav Khandelwal, Founder and CEO of ChaiONE, talking about the new product, called Game Plan. This is The Business Makers Show, heard on the radio and seen, online, at thebusinessmakers.com.