Ajay Bulusu, Co-founder of Nextbillion AI, caught his first break working at Google in 2011. Bulusu has spent the last decade working in mobility, maps, digital advertising, and eCommerce across various roles in the USA, Singapore, India, Japan, and the UK. After building out the Geo team at Grab from 0-400, Bulusu found the confidence and inspiration to start NextBillion AI. Bulusu handles investor relationships, APAC customer relationships, and manages the largest early-stage customers of Nextbillion AI.
Please tell us a little bit about your company, what is NextBillion AI all about?
Nextbillion AI is enabling location AI for enterprises. The biggest challenge today is one map doesn’t fit all. We all have experienced our food delivered late or cold, ride-hailing giving us the wrong ETA, or parcel getting delivered to the wrong address. These problems arise from underlying mapping technology. A telematics company faces a different set of mapping problems from someone in the food delivery industry, which is different from rideshare, and last-mile delivery.
Consumers are frustrated and drivers spend a lot of time on the road emitting CO2. Enterprises struggle with solving these issues as mapping technology is complex, requires AI, many custom tools, and human intervention which creates a high barrier to entry. NextBillion Maps is the first mapping solution to truly solve this. We are the first-ever, decentralized, modular, and customized map, built just for specific use cases. We provide a hyper-accurate set of Mapping APIs that can sit on top of business private cloud or servers.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
Our team comes from Grab, Google, Waymo, and many other transportation mapping companies. Gaurav, Shaolin, and I were at Grab (a big ride-sharing company in SEA) before starting NextBillion in early 2020.
I got my first break at Google in 2011, moved to California, and got an opportunity with Indeed in Japan. After a few incredible months in Japan, I moved to New York to work for American Express.
For me, the company began when I moved to Singapore to set the mapping team at Grab. We grew the team from 0 to 400+ in 3 years which is what gave me the confidence and inspiration for Nextbillion AI.
We identified that one map doesn’t fit all. Consumer expectations are growing and enterprises are now becoming increasingly sophisticated, requiring highly customized mapping solutions that fit their specific use case.
In today’s age of instant gratification hyperlocal is the way to go. Whether it’s Amazon or Walmart, global players are embracing bespoke, hyperlocal ecosystems. There’s a demand for a mapping SaaS solution that’s highly customizable, gives more control, and is cost-effective.
Today, we are a one-year-old company with offices in 4 countries and building mapping AI solutions for the world.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- Work hard because there is no secret recipe for success.
- Keep learning because as an entrepreneur you will always need to expand your knowledge and face new challenges apart from your niche.
- Focus and never give up, push yourself to achieve your goal.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Nextbillion AI started as a fundamental AI company. Our first product is an AI-powered mapping solution for enterprises. Currently, we provide solutions for verticals such as ride-hailing, food-delivery, mobility, and logistics. Eventually, we want to be available for enterprises that move anything from one place to another around the world.
Our eventual goal is to experiment with multiple verticalized AI solutions. One vertical we’re exploring is content, as it’s an area that’s exploding, and remains largely unsolved. We hope we can replicate the success we’ve had with maps in other verticals.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Most of the apps we use in our daily lives such as getting a cab, ordering food, and others highly depend on maps. Maps were always built for billions of users like us but for not millions of enterprises that consumer companies we work with. We are bridging the gap by building a new-era in the mapping ecosystem to help enterprises succeed better.
What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
Our product and geographic focus was designed mostly toward smaller markets whereas the problems we eventually are solving are global in nature. We should have focused on a specific product and market instead of spreading ourselves too thin in the initial days We also didn’t focus enough on the go-to-market strategy early enough (sales, sales engineering, product marketing, customer success, etc.)
How do you go about marketing your business, and what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Honestly, our solution does the marketing for us. Nextbillion AI is solving the challenge enterprises are facing in the mapping world. There is also an element of market creation that we’re doing, so educating the market and our customers on how to think of maps is a key element for us. For example, product marketing and content marketing via educational blog posts, case studies, white papers will be a key focus for us.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Since we are creating a market in many ways, an important aspect has been educating the market about maps, and everything it can do for them. So far, we’ve done this via working very closely with our customers and through extensive handholding, and even providing free consulting
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
It’s not enough to solve a valuable problem and build a good product. Focus on the go-to market is equally as critical.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
CRM tools to help manage and grow our customer base. Slack and chat tools for internal and external collaboration. GSuite and GDocs for remote collaboration on documents and strategy. Collaboration tools are especially important to us because we’re a company where everyone works remotely, and our customers are spread across the globe across 5 different continents.
What are three books or courses would you recommend to entrepreneurs?
- Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Steve Krug
- The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail – Clayton M. Christensen
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Hardcover – Peter Thiel
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I have enjoyed every bit of my career experience to date.
Working for very large firms with great brands, while it’s a great experience in its way, but it’s overrated as a place to start a career. Joining more mid-sized fast-growing firms, where you are given tons of responsibility from early, and where your abilities get pushed to your limits, are much better places to work in for your long-term career
If you only had $1,000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would continue working in my current job and look to identify a painful problem that I could solve OR Spend the money speaking to prospective customers trying to learn about their problems. Either way, the key is to obsessively focus on customers and identify a valuable problem that’s worth solving. Once that’s in place, there are many different ways to finance a business.
What is your favorite quote?
“If you take time to realize what your dream is and what you really want in life– no matter what it is, whether it’s sports or in other fields– you have to realize that there is always work to do, and you want to be the hardest working person in whatever you do, and you put yourself in a position to be successful,”
– Steph Curry.
What is your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
I have started at adversity thrice in my professional life and have come out stronger every-time. My only advice is to just work hard for the first 10-15 years of your career, never give up, and always keep learning. I didn’t study beyond 2009, never completed an MBA, and never attended a University post-recession. But I still learn every day at my job. A lot of the youngsters that I have met and mentored recently want instant success, constant gratification, and a lot of money. All this will follow if you work hard and keep your eyes and ears open.
Who should we interview next and why?
Ashwini Asokan, CEO of MadStreetDen and Vue.ai. She’s a fantastic entrepreneur who is building an incredible enterprise AI company, targeting a large problem, has raised money from top investors, and is also growing at a blistering pace. Also, being a female founder and CEO, shines light on how we need more role models like her in the tech industry.
Random Bonus: With the game on the line and 5 seconds on the clock, who takes the last shot? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James?
They are all-time greats. But my bet would be on Jordan just because of his self-confidence and not wilting under pressure. Being a basketball player myself, I would also be cautious of the team I’m playing against, how they run plays, and time on-the-clock.
How can we get in touch with you?
To get in touch please add me on social media, using the handle @ajaybulls.
Random Startup Interview: Mike Dragan: Live Commerce Will Change the World
