This week, Aditya Kamat, co-founder of DialNexa delves into the process of going from a successful services business to building a lean B2B voice AI platform, designed to automate repetitive business calls.
Listen to the Podcast: Available on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Aditya’s platform, DialNexa, allows businesses to build voice AI agents to converse across sales, customer success and recruitment. The idea emerged from a problem he faced after building HeyCoach with his co-founder. He found himself managing a large sales operation where revenue was difficult to predict and the same repetitive conversations were taking up significant amounts of the team's time.
From Managing Sales to Building a Product
Aditya and his co-founder first met around ten years earlier at a startup pitching competition before eventually leaving careers at LinkedIn and Google to build HeyCoach. The business was bootstrapped and grew into a sizable operation, but its reliance on sales meant unpredictability for the business.
Rather than accepting the unpredictable nature of their business, the founders returned to their engineering backgrounds to begin exploring whether technology could automate parts of the sales process. What started as a small voice AI project within HeyCoach, ended up being a tool that reduced manual effort yet allowing the business to increase call volume.
Knowing When to Start Again
As they continuously tested the technology, it became clearer that they were building something that could serve businesses beyond their own. They began working with design partners and developing DialNexa as a standalone B2B platform, eventually taking it to the wider market.
Sadly, with limited time and bandwidth, the co-founders could not continue running HeyCoach while building DialNexa. They agreed to wind down the business and put all efforts towards their new venture. While leaving behind a company that had grown to around 120 people was an emotional experience, it gave them the freedom to build something that aligned better with their future direction.
Building Lean and Learning Along the Way
The move from services to product also changed Aditya's understanding of growth. Services could generate revenue quickly, while building a product required patience and time before customers could see its full value. What they initially expected to take a couple of months took closer to a year to reach the level of maturity they wanted.
Today, DialNexa is deliberately operating with a lean team, with a strong focus on builders and AI-first execution. Rather than hiring ahead of growth, the founders plan to add people as the business reaches specific revenue milestones.
The Importance of the Right Partnership
It is not surprising that a positive relationship between co-founders makes the process more enjoyable, and for Aditya, the relationship with his co-founder has been just as important as the technology they were building. He speaks about the necessity of resolving disagreements without letting ego take over, taking time with major decisions and treating challenges as something they face together rather than against each other.
Both founders are also comfortable switching roles and learning outside their traditional areas of expertise, keeping the process exciting as they are always learning and evolving. After dividing sales, customer success, technology and marketing between them at HeyCoach, they have effectively reversed those responsibilities at DialNexa, choosing to enjoy the process of learning rather than staying within one established speciality.
Building for the Next Stage
For now, DialNexa is focused on becoming a trusted voice AI platform for Indian businesses with high-volume calling requirements, with international expansion coming after the company has established a strong base in its home market.
Aditya's biggest takeaway from building HeyCoach is ensuring balance between services and product development earlier, rather than pursuing revenue so aggressively. Essentially, Aditya’s story unfolds around tackling a problem you understand personally and giving a product enough time to mature before expecting it to deliver.
Listen to the Podcast: Available on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Connect with Aditya Kamat and learn more about DialNexa.