Meet Gautam, the CEO of Perkbox – a business that helps other companies care for, connect with and celebrate their employees – no matter where they are in the world.

After previously transforming and stabilising the financially struggling Thomson Local, Gautam became COO and later CEO of Perkbox.

He has played a crucial role in scaling the operations from four to 200 people and achieving $73.5 million in revenue as of 2020.

In this episode of Nothing Ventured, Gautam shares his experiences and gives insight into the reviving of businesses. He later discusses the misconceptions about Venture Capital and the secret to innovation within large and established companies.

Thomson Local – back from the dead.

Earlier in his career, Gautam orchestrated a complete operational and financial reorganisation of Thomson Local, which was financially drowning at the time.

Aarish explains that Gautam transformed a legacy print business to online, saved it from a potential creditors liquidation, and took it from a 7 million cash loss to a million positive cash flow.

When saving a business, Gautam stresses that cost reduction is achieved by the simplification of the business – not just by reducing costs.

He says that ‘you need to understand the processes in your business that drive cost and the processes that drive return. For example, by transitioning to online at Thomson Local, we reduced a significant proportion of the cost and kept the company afloat for a year while we discussed with creditors what to do next.’

Once the cash outflow bleeding has stopped, Gautam emphasised the importance of focusing on relevance – what remains that can be profitable?

In the case of Thomson and Local, they turned their focus toward data lists and digital advertisement.

So, Gautam stopped the bleeding and eventually turned it into a profitable business.

Scaling back.

At Perkbox, the costs were very different from those at Thomson Local because Perkbox was a healthy and growing company. According to Gautam, the company had “diversified into numerous products and numerous segments in terms of customer types, and when you do that, you drive a lot of complexity costs. Some areas were clear winners, some question marks, and other areas were losing money.”

Gautam de-layered and scaled back the business until they were only left with the areas that were successful.

Considering that complexity drives cost, he simplified the business so that time and energy could be focused on the areas they were excelling in.

Venture Capital – a punctuation mark in the journey of your business.

In this episode, Gautam and Aarish discuss the misconceptions about Venture Capital. Gautam believes many people view it as an end goal rather than a means to an end.

He says that “entrepreneurs should keep in mind that raising finance is not glamorous.

What’s glamorous is solving problems for your customers and creating a valuable business.

Venture capital or money is just a mechanism used to do that.”

It is vital as a founder to consider why you are taking money, who you are taking it from, and the expectations that must be met when raising Venture Capital.

Gautam and Aarish also discuss the advancements that have been made in recent years in the world of Venture Capital.

According to Aarish, there’s a whole ecosystem of alt lending that didn’t exist five years ago.

Continuous innovation.

As businesses grow, they forget that their mission is to solve a problem for consumers.

The focus shifts to revenue, processes, and finances when it should primarily remain on the customer.

According to Gautam, communicating with your customers is vital for innovation and ensuring relevance.

He says, “you need to demonstrate to everyone that the customer is at the centre of your organisation. Breathe into the company the ethos of customers interest – that’s how you innovate – by focusing on what the problem and the pinpoint is”.

If you want to hear more about what Gautam did to revive two businesses and his thoughts on Venture Capital and innovation, listen to the full conversation on the Nothing Ventured Podcast.

You can also find Gautam on LinkedIn (@Gautam Sahgal).