I've spent 14 years at two of India's most influential B2B platforms — IndiaMART and Naukri.com. Combined, these two companies have served millions of Indian SMBs, built some of the largest tele-sales operations in the country, and navigated every market condition from post-demonetisation slowdowns to COVID disruption to AI-led transformation.
What follows are the lessons that have stayed with me — not the ones from success stories, but the ones earned from being wrong in expensive ways and having to figure out the truth from data and from people.
Every time a salesperson tells me a prospect "didn't have budget," I dig in. Nine times out of ten, the budget existed — the trust didn't. An SMB owner who trusts the person selling will find the budget. One who doesn't trust you will not find it even if it's sitting in their current account. I wasted years trying to solve a budget problem that was actually a relationship problem.
The first sale is mostly about the rep. The renewal is about whether the product delivered. Early in my career, I saw teams celebrate acquisition metrics while quietly ignoring renewal rates. The organisations I respect most track renewal as a first-order metric — not because it's a nice-to-have, but because it tells you whether your product actually works for your customers.
In every sales team I've managed, there is a gap between the top performer's conversion rate and the median that is largely unexplained by work ethic or phone hours. It's explained by specific behaviours, specific language patterns, specific discovery questions. For years, this knowledge lived in one person's head. When they left, it left with them. The best investment I made was systematically recording, analysing, and distributing what the best reps were doing differently — making the top-performer insights institutional rather than individual.
I made the mistake — twice — of expanding into new geographies with a metro-designed GTM. Same product, same script, same incentive structure, same marketing. Results were consistently 40–60% below Tier 1 performance. The problem was not the team or the market — it was the model. Tier 2 and 3 India requires different language, different price points, different channel mix, and different relationship-building approaches. Respect the difference or you will pay for it.
I've seen floors run aggressive month-end close campaigns — special offers, deadline pressure, "last units available" messaging — and hit their quarter. Then I've seen the churn data 60 days later. Customers who bought under pressure are the first to cancel. They're also the loudest critics in their networks. In India's relationship-driven SMB market, a customer who cancels and complains costs you 10 potential customers through word of mouth. The math on high-pressure selling almost never works over a 12-month window.
Motivational speeches, leaderboards, incentive trips — these have a role. But the managers whose teams consistently outperform quarter after quarter are the ones who spend their time teaching: teaching specific skills, coaching specific calls, explaining specific mistakes. Motivation is a sugar rush. Teaching compounds over time.
The best decisions I've made were at the intersection of good data and experienced judgment. Data told me the conversion rate was falling. Judgment told me why — something the data couldn't fully explain. Organisations that worship data and ignore experience make different mistakes from organisations that worship experience and ignore data. The best sales leaders hold both together.
Why I built Bolo Aur Likho: The biggest systemic problem I observed across both organisations was that 98% of calls were invisible to management. Decisions about coaching, script changes, incentive design — all made based on 2% of the evidence. Bolo Aur Likho is my answer to that problem: AI-powered call quality audits that give sales leaders the full picture, not a sample.
Spend more time on retention than acquisition. Invest in your team leads earlier than feels necessary. Never mistake a market that's easy to enter for a market that's easy to win. And listen to your customers — not in surveys, but in their actual words, on their actual calls, about their actual problems.
The 14 years were worth every difficult conversation, every missed quarter, and every lesson learned the hard way. The Indian B2B market is the most demanding — and the most rewarding — place I know to build something.
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