Introdex — a startup that helps sales teams find valuable connections

Admet Akhter, City — Singapore, Co-founder & CEO at Introdex, Founder at Akhter Studios, @admet_akhter

How It All Started

I have been an IT entrepreneur for a little over three years. A year ago, I started the Introdex startup together with my co-founders. I also founded the operating business Akhter Studios.

It all began through Akhter Studios, as we develop custom software, provide consulting, and work with large businesses. We always faced the question of how to conduct sales. We had experience selling through networking. We realized that if you sell this type of service, it is better to sell through acquaintances or connectors. This is the best and most effective sales method. I then faced the question of how to expand into exports. I concluded that I needed to communicate with other founders, find out how they structure their sales, and observe what is happening with them. I found out that they also sell in the same way. Warm networking and connections bring 90% of the results. Despite high spending on marketing and advertising, they bring only 10% of orders. Even when orders come in, the sales volume is low. This prompted me to think that I needed to go to another country and study their experience.

My co-founders, Shamil and Jacob, and I decided to do something together in the field of B2B sales and artificial intelligence. We went through acceleration, did everything ourselves, communicated with potential clients and connectors, conducted many interviews, identified their pain points, and much more. At that time, we only hired designers to create prototypes. Then, as soon as we received our first investments for our four projects, we began hiring a development team. Akhter Studios was a good resource for us, as there were about 100 people involved in IT there, including developers and designers. This allowed us to easily assemble a team.

Target Audience

We help sales departments. They form a list of companies they need to approach with services or products, and their next task is to establish first contact and find decision-makers. Because in corporate companies, there are no sales without warm connections. And the question of how to get introduced through someone takes up 45% of their working time.

Most of our clients are global product companies from the US and Europe, as well as IT outsourcing and consulting companies. Currently, we have 31 clients, some of whom are paying, while others are in pilot programs. We have about 600 connectors on the platform located in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Acceleration Programs

In Singapore, we went through the Antler acceleration program. This is a global accelerator based in Singapore, present in more than 20 countries. They are the number one VC in the world by the number of investments. We came to Singapore because there is startup support here. We submitted an application, passed a three-stage selection. Every day from morning to evening we were in their office, attended workshops, tested ideas, and communicated with investors and clients. In the middle of the acceleration, we came up with the idea for Introdex.

In the acceleration program, the team is formed in the first stage, followed by a preliminary investment committee. In the final stage, the investment committee decides whom to fund. We passed all stages and received the maximum number of votes from VCs. As a result, we received investment and registered the company.

The main Pre-seed round was closed by investors from Singapore and the US. Also, MOST from Kazakhstan invested in us.

Difficulties

Living in Singapore is expensive, and the salary we pay founders is not enough, so we have to invest our own money.

Few people know about Kazakhstan. When communicating with investors from Southeast Asia, we often encountered questions about who had invested previously. There was a significant issue of distrust towards our country. We also face visa problems.

Achievements

We fully closed the Pre-seed round, managed to establish a lead source without spending money, and use resources as efficiently as possible. For us, lead sources are connectors, and government agencies are also actively helping.

We managed to build a small but effective team, with which we developed the first version of the product, releasing updates every two weeks.

We gained wide recognition in Singapore circles.

Plans

We faced the issue of having limited resources. Currently, we have a large volume of incoming company inquiries. There is potential partnership with the largest communities in Singapore, which work with all our target leads. If we allow them in, our traction could increase by 5-10 times. Therefore, we need to increase team resources. We have demand and supply, we know how to regulate it, and to grow, we need capital. Next, we have a clear strategy regarding which figures we need to reach by the end of the year. We want to attract connectors from South Korea and Southeast Asia.