India’s startup ECOSYSTEM has exploded in recent years, though lately these budding enterprises are under close scrutiny for their business models. The number of incubators and accelerators have shot up in the last few years; however, more often than not, their pain points do not receive adequate attention.

With incredible pressure on founders to get the maximum out of the 8-12-week programmes, Suresh Madhuvarsu, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of several B2B startups, identified and learned a lot of the good, the bad and the ugly of the mentorship ecosystem. He wanted to build a platform that primarily focused on how to make products that create value for users and bring in stickiness. As many startups came to Madhuvarsu for advice and mentorship, one thing became evident — the importance of building a product that solves problems, and ensuring users are willing to pay for it.

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To bridge this gap, Madhuvarsu started Product10x — a startup accelerator helping enterprise SaaS startups and VCs succeed. “Product10x is a set of advisors and mentors we wish we had when we started our companies. While startup founders are in the driver’s seat, we are there as the GPS interface and founder dashboard in every phase of the execution,” he says.

To date, Product10x has 20 startups in the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages all trying to get to the next level — identifying pilot plans, finding paying customers as well as pivoting the product based on customer feedback or fundraising to support expansion goals.

One such startup is CentSai. A financial literacy startup that helps financial advisors, schools and banks with its simple-to-understand content via its SaaS platform. Through Product10x’s support, the startup levelled up from pre-seed to seed and then close to Series A.

Another portfolio company is Indus.ai. An AI and vision analytics platform that helps construction companies to keep their workers safe, improve compliance and generate automatic site reports, it was acquired by Procore. This construction technology company went for an initial public offer in 2021.

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“Founders not having long-term help in executing the startups makes the difference in the startup going to the next phase,” says Madhuvarsu, highlighting the challenges faced by startups at different stages of fundraising. “We want more and more founders to be successful and help in the right interventions and strong support in startup strategy and execution.”

Since its inception, Product10x has been working towards helping founders build the right products for the right users and provide value to users upfront. More often than not, venture capital funds believe that funding will solve all the problems. However, founders go through enormous pressure when they hold the money without the proper proof-points, understanding of customer segments or the correct execution.

To make itself available to startup founders, Product10x uses a co-creation model where teams access advice and partner programs. Through mentors in product management, product strategy, pricing strategy for startups, go-to-market strategy SaaS, business development and sales to provide outcome-based results, Product 10x co-creates startups in the healthtech, edtech, HR-tech and productivity and collaboration areas.

“In the last ten years, many accelerators, incubators and founders have provided great ‘generic’ advice on the internet with thousands of quality content available. However, 90% of startup founders’ challenge is not about generic problem-solving but specific situations and solutions. Our founders love the fact that we are there for them in every situation and every phase,” shares Madhuvarsu when talking about his experience with entrepreneurs.

Over the last three years, Product 10x has developed playbooks that help founders to evaluate where they are and understand the need for sales and marketing readiness, amongst others.

In the next few years, the company plans to expand its fundraising to the United States. Product 10x is also planning to support at least ten startups building in the Health-tech, HR-tech and edtech space in the next two years.

BUILDING A BUSINESS
Product10x is a startup accelerator for SaaS startups
Helps launch, accelerate and scale them via co-creation model
Focuses on healthtech, edtech, HRtech, productivity & collaboration areas
Has admitted 20 startups so far in its portfolio