When Anchanto CEO and founder Vaibhav Dabhade gets on a call with e27, he speaks about how attending Echelon in 2011 inspired him to start the e-commerce and logistics tech company.

Today, Anchanto is present in 11 countries worldwide, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, UAE, the UK, and France. Despite market volatility, it has also achieved a 42 per cent growth by 2023.

“This shows that we are on the right track … and that our business model is working,” he says.

According to the CEO, significant milestones that Anchanto has made include the hiring of senior roles that it has been expecting to do for a long time and the acquisition of customers from specific segments such as the B2B and Muslim commerce segments.

But this does not mean that running a growth stage startup is not without challenges. With a team of 140 people across 11 countries, Dabhade names different levels of challenges, starting with communications. “A lot of time is spent to ensure that we don’t miscommunicate, under-communicate or over-communicate with.”

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The next challenge is ensuring that the Anchanto software is always integrated into the local e-commerce and supply chain ecosystem so that customers can use it properly. This includes making sure that the Anchanto platform is in line with new e-commerce and logistics regulations in 11 countries, a workload that could put a strain on any team.

To tackle this, Anchanto tries to be present in every market it operates in.

“In every market we are active in, we always have a local small team. We spend time and more effort in partnerships with platforms and supply chain companies for integration. That is definitely a different scale of problem compared to when we were small,” he elaborates.

Every time Anchanto enters a new market, it sends a launch team that brings its expertise to set up the company’s presence before it hires a local team.

“Over a period of time, the local management team will be hired, and the launch team will stay until it is time for them to exit to go to the next market. That systematic playbook approach has worked very well for us.”

Dabhade also shares that human resources account for around 80 per cent of the company’s costs as a software company.

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“We are a software company, so it is very simple for us. We do not own offices, infrastructure, warehouses, inventory, or anything. We only own laptops, and our people work remotely from the offices that we rent,” he explains, stressing that in business, people make all the difference.

“If you support their career path, give them things to do, and share the benefits with them, they will make all the difference. You cannot grow a company where the people do not grow.”

Final thoughts on running a growth-stage startup

Anchanto raised a US$12 million Series C funding round in 2020 from the likes of MDI Ventures and Ascendia. Back then, the company had already claimed profitability.

When asked about the other things growth-stage startups should always keep in mind, Dabhade stresses the importance of ensuring that the company never runs out of cash.

“Make use of your money very, very carefully. That comes to the first thing in my mind when we talk because, when you are growing, it is very easy to end up burning money. So, be extremely frugal in our approach.”

He laments the cash-burning culture that many startups swear by, calling it a potential damage in the long run, both for the companies, their customers, and the e-commerce ecosystem. “You have to take care of your fundamentals.”

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Dabhade also reveals that Anchanto never withdraws from every market with a presence.

“We prefer to walk slowly, but we do not walk back. That has been our principle everywhere we go. We stay there, we grow there. We never withdraw.”

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Image Credit: Anchanto

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