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Welcome to the first installment of our Founders Interview Series. This series is dedicated to bringing you inspiring stories of extraordinary entrepreneurs in our family.
In our debut interview, we're hanging out with Rohan Thambrahalli, founder of DimeTyd. Rohan gets real about his journey, the ups and downs he's faced, and the big wins that have marked his success. He also chats about how joining the Threecolts team has been a real game-changer for him and his product.
Without further ado, let's delve into the conversation and draw inspiration from Rohan's remarkable story. Enjoy the read!
So, let's get right to it! Sit back, relax, and enjoy Rohan's awesome story. Happy reading!
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Hey, how's it going?
00:00:01:17 - 00:00:03:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
Good, man. How are you?
00:00:03:05 - 00:00:06:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Good, good, good. Good to be here. Good to be in London. And good to see everybody.
00:00:06:18 - 00:00:08:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, likewise.
00:00:08:05 - 00:00:18:05
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Welcome. So, thank you for your time today. We're going to learn a little bit about your story through this course. Why don't we just get started?
00:00:18:05 - 00:00:19:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Um, so tell me
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
about how you started. Well, introduce yourself. Introduce your business.
00:00:23:05 - 00:00:24:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Yeah. And then
00:00:24:17 - 00:00:29:01
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
let's get into a little bit more about those introducing you.
00:00:29:05 - 00:01:16:15
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, absolutely. Again, thanks. Thanks for this opportunity. Yeah. My name is Rohan Thambrahalli, and we founded DimeTyd, which is a fully automated FinOps platform for Amazon vendors globally. And my background always has been in technology, in e-commerce, but primarily focused on B2B and large enterprise customers and really finding sort of creative solutions that are tech-enabled to save these enterprise customers.
00:01:16:17 - 00:01:22:15
Rohan Thambrahalli
Time, money and deliver efficiencies in how they run their e-commerce business.
00:01:22:15 - 00:01:38:03
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Fantastic, Fantastic. So and throughout your e-commerce journey or your technology journey, I suspect that you built a bunch of different products, right. What was the motivation behind building DimeTyd specifically?
00:01:38:03 - 00:02:19:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, you know, that's a that's, that's, that's a great question that, you know, that we get asked often and and I think the answer is is has is really evolved since the first time we you know, we launched a platform in a we realized very early on with DimeTyd that that FinOps as a as a function whether you're a vendor to Amazon, whether you're a vendor to Walmart or Target or what have you seen ups as a function within e-commerce was very manual.
00:02:19:17 - 00:02:50:18
Rohan Thambrahalli
There is no automated way of auditing and reconciling remittances was also very opaque in the sense that, you know, if you had an issue or a claim that you would submit, you didn't really have line of sight into what's happening to that that that that claims lifecycle, if you will, you know and and we fundamentally believe that is a problem that cannot be solved by throwing bodies at it.
00:02:50:18 - 00:03:11:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
It was a machine problem and it really needed an intelligent platform to address all of these things. And and we went out to, you know, look to see if there's something out there already. We didn't find it. And and then we decided to we just decide to build it ourselves.
00:03:11:10 - 00:03:17:01
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Okay. So was that an issue you use case to apply downside to your business?
00:03:17:01 - 00:03:54:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We you know, with our other businesses, we've experienced this this issue with FinOps firsthand. We knew that there was profit leakage happening. We knew that they were inefficiencies within our business that were not necessarily driven due to due to the lack of what our people were doing, but due to the complexity and scale at which some of these, you know, e-commerce platforms operate.
00:03:54:13 - 00:04:27:16
Rohan Thambrahalli
And we wanted a solution. And like I said, we we look for an off the shelf solution on there wasn't one even though you know, there are ERPs that are that that that that we use within our businesses. But there's a wide difference between you know, how the data is presented, for example, remittances from Amazon and how the data is ingested, let's say in the ERP, whether it's SAP or Netsuite, there needs to be massaging.
00:04:27:16 - 00:04:32:23
Rohan Thambrahalli
That needs to happen in the middle. And and that was a gap that DimeTyd filled.
00:04:32:23 - 00:04:42:11
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Okay so what would you say at the um if you had to say you picked up two or three problems on down to solving. Right. What would you say? Those are very simple.
00:04:42:11 - 00:04:51:10
Rohan Thambrahalli
The first one is identifying profit leakages
00:04:51:10 - 00:04:52:22
Rohan Thambrahalli
and
00:04:52:22 - 00:04:57:10
Rohan Thambrahalli
finding dollars that are out there to be to be recouped.
00:04:57:10 - 00:04:58:22
Rohan Thambrahalli
And
00:04:58:22 - 00:05:51:08
Rohan Thambrahalli
secondly, I think, you know, from a operations standpoint, identifying what levers can be pulled to make your business more efficient and more profitable on an ongoing basis. And then lastly, I think is empower offering the customers to look at their business from a FinOps lens and understand what levers they can pull, not just to drive more EBITDA within their business, but then also have a very intellectual discussion with a vendor manager or a buyer around why their businesses operating the way it's happening and what they're doing internally to fix it and what they
00:05:51:08 - 00:05:57:21
Rohan Thambrahalli
want someone like Amazon or Walmart to do to help them bridge those gaps.
00:05:57:21 - 00:06:20:18
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And these are very powerful because at this point in time where we generally see in downward pressure on demand, right, the free cash flow, the increased profitability that the solution provides is going to be very helpful to the vendor in general. So, okay, you had this problem, you build DimeTyd, right? It's working great for your businesses.
00:06:20:22 - 00:06:22:20
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
How did you get this to the rest of the world?
00:06:22:20 - 00:06:57:21
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, you know, this this is this is really kind of an interesting case study in in, in, in scalability of the business. You know, when when we first launched the the platform, you know, the biggest hurdle that we we needed to get over was was was that trust. You know, we believe 100% that we have a solution that will work for every Amazon vendor that's out there.
00:06:57:23 - 00:07:44:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
But but we also needed to convey and show them that they can trust us to give access to, let's say, for example, their vendor Central. Right. And the way we we sort of bridge that gap and trust was to find some key channel partners in specific categories whether it's whether it's, you know, marketing agencies or Amazon agencies or other agency partners in and we empowered them to present our solution to companies that they're working with on a day to day basis that have established trust.
00:07:44:02 - 00:08:23:22
Rohan Thambrahalli
And all we wanted was an opportunity for us to onboard these brands onto the platform, do an audit for them, go back, do an audit for them, and and demonstrate to them that, hey, there's a lot of, you know, money, if you will, out there for us to go recoup. And and that was sort of our strategy that we leverage to to scale the business in the way that we have because it's such an instrumental thing to, you know, have the trust and the relationship that these partners have agency partners have.
00:08:23:22 - 00:08:32:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
For us, it just to speak to revenue in the speed to market was significantly reduced because of those strategic relationships.
00:08:32:05 - 00:08:55:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and that's a pretty clever go to market approach. Now as you increase your user base and whatnot, do you have the have you had to evolve the product in any way to meet needs that you did’nt scope out in the initial product design or has that progress overtime.
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah,
00:08:53:17 - 00:08:55:04
Rohan Thambrahalli
yeah, yeah,
00:08:55:04 - 00:09:30:22
Rohan Thambrahalli
yeah. We definitely would. We definitely have evolved the product and you know, will continue to do that. One of the things that we realized very, very quickly was that the, for example, cash application piece of when, let's say Amazon sends remittances, we quickly realized that that is a very, very manual and very painful process for small organization, medium organizations, and even Fortune 1000 organizations.
00:09:31:00 - 00:10:00:08
Rohan Thambrahalli
So we've built a module on the platform, if you will, that automates cash application. You know, this is such a power. It's very esoteric because it's very AR driven, but it is a very, very powerful tool that can save in some organizations, up to 10 to 15 hours a week because they no longer have to apply cash manually.
00:10:00:08 - 00:10:37:14
Rohan Thambrahalli
When Amazon sends remittances or cap cash application does stack for them in an automated way. We have prebuilt headers on on the platform for most accounting and ERP systems. So all they have to do is we agree on a sequence of how often we run cash application, we run the cash application and the customer can download a detailed reconciliation report, upload in their system in something that would take them five, ten, 15 hours, depending on the size of the business now takes less than 15 minutes.
00:10:37:14 - 00:10:59:01
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Okay. Okay. So in terms of deciding with the buckets to allocate the cash to, is that do you scope that out in conjunction with the client upon commencement of the of the agreement? Or are these predetermined based on the history of client transactions that you dealt with?
00:10:59:01 - 00:11:30:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, it's you know, it's a combination of both actually, because different customers, mainly enterprise customers, want to apply cash differently. You know, you can have you can have a large enterprise customers that that you know, certain dollars would need to go into certain buckets or certain departments and and we can capture the requirement from the customers as we're onboarding them.
00:11:30:03 - 00:12:14:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
And, and then and then when we run the cash application, the cash is then sort of applied, if you will, in those GLs or those buckets that are that are kind of relevant to the customer's specific business or departments. For example, you know, you can take a it can take a a large a large customer that might have multiple brands under under one company, for example, and they might want the cash to be applied to based on invoice and POs to a specific brand.
00:12:14:07 - 00:12:16:12
Rohan Thambrahalli
And we have the ability to do that.
00:12:16:12 - 00:12:18:12
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
That makes a lot of sense, that's a pretty nifty
00:12:18:12 - 00:12:20:00
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
application I wishI had that years
00:12:20:00 - 00:12:33:11
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
ago. Okay, so that was good. So, all right, you guys has brought you guys and customers very excited, Right? What do you with some of your major milestones? Yeah, over the over the course of your journey.
00:12:33:11 - 00:12:53:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
You know, I would you know, I would say that our first, you know, major milestone really was getting unsolicited, really, really positive feedback from a large enterprise customer.
00:12:53:11 - 00:12:54:23
Rohan Thambrahalli
And
00:12:54:23 - 00:13:18:17
Rohan Thambrahalli
they did not just love the product. They, they love the information, the intelligence that was providing the in addition to sort of the revenue recovery or profit recovery, you know, the amount of time it's saving for their for for for their teams.
00:13:18:19 - 00:13:55:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
So that was a big one. The second one was when these larger enterprise customers start to come to us and say, Hey, this is great, but we want to now start using the platform on an ongoing basis and we want you guys to essentially automate our entire FinOps function, right? So not just revenue recovery. We're talking about FPNA, we're talking about cash application, we're talking about ASIN-Level Profitability, your product level profitability, forecasting, right?
00:13:55:07 - 00:14:13:09
Rohan Thambrahalli
All of this thing that they might have, you know, anywhere from 5 to 10 people doing all this stuff manually. Are we've automated that right and delivered tremendous time savings that they can now repurpose in other areas of the business.
00:14:13:09 - 00:14:14:21
Rohan Thambrahalli
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:30:04
Rohan Thambrahalli
And then, you know, and the third biggest one was obviously, you know, us becoming part of the Threecolts family.
Rohan Thambrahalli
You know, as there was you know, as a big, big milestone that only kind of goes to show that the work that you know the team did in the last in 24 months from really kind of scaling the business and then having the ability to, you know, work with you, Yota and the rest of the team at Threecolts and us being welcome and the Threecolts family has been it's been quite amazing.
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Glad to hear that. So how did how did that come to be and what was that story from to get to becoming a part of the family?
00:15:09:07 - 00:15:55:08
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah. You know I got reached out by by Mike Mike, you know Mike Dash awe had a you know, we kind of set up a quick 30-minut sync. You know, he wanted to learn a little bit about what we're doing and share the shared, shared, shared quite a bit about what what Threecolts was doing, kind of what the vision is and the fact that, you know, Threecolts was kind of not just yeah, you know, sort of challenging the status quo if you if you mean in its most traditional way.
00:15:55:10 - 00:16:25:18
Rohan Thambrahalli
But I think we had a very focused strategy around what we want to do within the e-commerce ecosystem or operating system, if you will, And how will DimeTyd fit as part of that overall strategy? And that was sort of the start of the discussion and the journey that we you know, we went down the path with Threecolts.
00:16:25:18 - 00:16:28:18
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Yeah yeah. And that'sgood um well as
00:16:28:18 - 00:16:30:06
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
been having you as part of the
00:16:30:06 - 00:16:45:17
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
family for sure. What would you say it's a lot of change right. Moving from singular business to the wider Threecolts ecosystem, right. How has that transition been like for you and for your team in large?
00:16:45:17 - 00:17:24:14
Rohan Thambrahalli
I would say the transition has been great. You know, I think I think oftentimes you get into these things where there's so many unknowns, right? There's there is different there's different business partners, there's different stakeholders. But but I think one thing that made it really seamless was the willingness to the willingness to pivot where we needed to pivot because of the broader goals we have.
00:17:24:16 - 00:18:22:15
Rohan Thambrahalli
I think secondly, the fact that we know what the strengths were within the DimeTyd organization, and we continue to harness that right, without having to without having to re-engineer a bunch of stuff. And then and then lastly, I think, you know, kind of the support from, you know, the leadership team, if you will, you know, yourself, Yoda, around empowering the DimeTyd team to stay focused on the FinOps function, if you will, and and and provide resources and other opportunities for us to really get deeper into that space and really be the dominant player there.
00:18:22:15 - 00:18:26:03
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Nice, nice, nice. So can you tell us a little bit
00:18:26:03 - 00:18:27:15
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
about what that was?
00:18:27:15 - 00:18:37:03
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Looks like, right, Because DimeTyd, I know it was very one big focus. Now, how is that focus of you and your team expanded since coming into Threecolts?
00:18:37:03 - 00:18:37:04
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
00:18:38:08 - 00:19:13:02
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, you know, for Threecolts our vision on the on the revenue recovery side is to be the dominant player for 1p 3pand other platforms. Right so we have a very focused strategy in terms of how we're going to accomplish that. We are automating a lot of stuff on a 3ps side of the business.
00:19:13:04 - 00:19:48:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
We are unifying our solutions on the 3ps of the business and and soon we want to give our customers a singular look and feel from the UI UX standpoint as well, make it very, very easy and seamless for them to use both our solutions. But then also looking at, you know, can we look at something like a cash application and ASIN-Level Profitability and make that available on the 3ps side of the business?
00:19:48:11 - 00:19:54:13
Rohan Thambrahalli
Because I think those are very, very relevant solutions that currently don't exist in the
00:19:54:13 - 00:19:55:00
Rohan Thambrahalli
marketplace.
00:19:55:00 - 00:20:21:12
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
That's true. Two very, very good points. Well, I'm excited to see what comes out of that. So you've been doing this process right now. What would you tell that interpreted as who have good product, good traction within that market and you get reached out to why Threecolts? How do you, what kind of counsel would you give them on what to expect?
00:20:21:12 - 00:20:35:12
Rohan Thambrahalli
I think I think the first thing was really to have a very crystal clear strategy on growth
00:20:35:12 - 00:20:36:12
Rohan Thambrahalli
00:20:36:12 - 00:20:38:00
Rohan Thambrahalli
right.
00:20:38:00 - 00:20:39:12
Rohan Thambrahalli
00:20:39:12 - 00:20:42:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
Secondly secondly is it's
00:20:42:11 - 00:20:43:23
Rohan Thambrahalli
about, you know,
00:20:43:23 - 00:20:47:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
making making sure that
00:20:47:11 - 00:20:48:23
Rohan Thambrahalli
making sure that
00:20:48:23 - 00:21:04:11
Rohan Thambrahalli
they have a good understanding of where Threecolts today is and where they want to be three, five years and how their business fits, not just fits in that, but can it also
00:21:04:11 - 00:21:05:23
Rohan Thambrahalli
become the catalyst
00:21:05:23 - 00:21:11:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
to get Threecolts to where we want to go in the next 3 to 5 years?
00:21:11:03 - 00:21:45:06
Rohan Thambrahalli
Right. And I think lastly, the the the people aspect is so important, right? I think I think, you know, if we were working with like minded people, it's not only fun, but also you can feed off of each other. You know, you can you can you can, you can leverage, you know, each other's energy, if you will. Right.
00:21:45:08 - 00:22:06:14
Rohan Thambrahalli
And then I'm kind of reminded of something that that I always think about is, you know, there is really you know, there's three problems that that we're all trying to solve. Right. It's the is the time, the money and the and the and the and the brain. Right. The thinking problem. Right. And we know, you know, what the the solutions are for time and the money.
00:22:06:16 - 00:22:31:09
Rohan Thambrahalli
But the thinking problem you can only solve by collaborating you can only solve by talking discussing and that becomes super easy when you're working with like minded people. And and and I think those are kind of, at least for me or the three big things that have made this process such a delight.
00:22:31:09 - 00:22:34:21
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Yeah, that's good to hear hey team. That's
00:22:34:21 - 00:22:36:09
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
all right.
00:22:36:09 - 00:22:49:20
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
So I guess we got to wrap it up here there. Any last thoughts that you want to share with the viewing audience that we didn't cover throughout this discussion?
00:22:49:20 - 00:23:28:01
Rohan Thambrahalli
Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say that when I look at when I look at Threecolts, look across, you know, across all of the all of the businesses we have, first, I think when you look at FinOps, we have an amazing strategy around enterprise customer base and our product is super relevant. We've got the right people and we'll continue to develop the product to be more relevant for enterprise customers.
00:23:28:01 - 00:24:05:19
Rohan Thambrahalli
So I don't see anybody else in the space that can make the impact that we can make in FinOps for enterprise customers. Secondly, the fact that we have portfolio of products that we're going to start integrating across multiple different businesses, I think is again going to put us in a position where we will have a competitive first mover advantage because we'll be able to impact some very critical areas of our customers business outside of FinOps.
00:24:07:07 - 00:24:12:18
Rohan Thambrahalli
And lastly, I think our vision is
00:24:12:18 - 00:24:14:06
Rohan Thambrahalli
clear
00:24:14:06 - 00:24:54:14
Rohan Thambrahalli
but also evolving, right? So we are not so myopic that saying that we're not going to evolve our vision with what our customers want, what's happening in the micro environment, what's happening in the macro environment. So I think the fact that we're open and evolving and, you know, keeping the customer first mindset is something that is going to again propel us and enable what we're trying to do across all of our businesses by delivering amazing products and services for our customers.
00:24:54:14 - 00:24:58:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
Enterprise, medium and small, all of them.
00:24:58:05 - 00:25:00:04
Kennedell Amoo-Gottfried
Fantastic. Good stuff.
00:25:00:05 - 00:25:01:17
Rohan Thambrahalli
Well, awesome.
00:25:01:17 - 00:25:03:05
Rohan Thambrahalli
Thanks. I appreciate it.
If you enjoyed this interview, feel free to head over to our YouTube Founders Interview Playlist for more videos or our Spotify Podcast. Whatever your favourite way of consuming content may be, text, audio, or video, Threecolts has you covered on all fronts.
