IndustrialSage Episode 125 Transcript
Danny:
Okay, let's jump in today's episode. I have the Founder and President of The Upstart Group [now renamed UpstartWorks] based in Chicago, this is Rohan Thambrahalli. Thank you so much for joining me today, Rohan.
Rohan:
Hey, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Danny:
This is great, so for those who aren't familiar with The Upstart Group. And I want to be very specific, there's a few Upstart Groups, you guys are based in Chicago.

That's right.
Danny:
Tell me, tell our audience who you guys are and what you guys do.
Rohan:
We're a technology company, focused on working specifically with commercial industrial brands. Helping them, really harness the power of E-commerce. And many different E-commerce marketplaces and E-commerce platforms.
Danny:
Great. So E-commerce is a little topic. It's a little hot right now. But before we kind of jump into all that stuff, tell me a little bit about your background, how did you get started into this space? What's your background?
Rohan:
Look my background is traditional industrial sales. I grew up in the B2B industrial sales distribution space. Focused on selling industrial commercial products to large enterprise customers. Really five, seven years ago as I was in front of customers talking about a product I continuously found that the customers were listening to me, talking about whether it's a commercial lighting product or whether it's power tools, pneumatic tools, they really wanted social proof, right? They really wanted to see what other people were saying about this product. And they turn to the web and specifically, they turn to Amazon to see what people are saying about this product and how they were using it, different application.

And that really was kind of the genesis of the business. For me, it was kind of a light bulb went off and said, "Wow, this customer who was buying product for a large enterprise is still turning to a platform that historically was really just meant for individual consumers to buy a cell phone case or an iPhone charger." And that really was the genesis of the company.
Danny:
That's awesome. So that's an interesting thing that you were talking about. You said you found your customers, they wanted that social proof, they want to get reviews. We want to be able to see how this product performs and whatnot and I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that because of, we'll call it the Amazon effect or what have you. Because we have been predisposed as consumers to buy a certain way. The way that you and I buy now, likely, right? When we're looking for a product, we're looking for a new iPhone case, okay? We're going to go look online, nine times out of 10, we're probably going to land on Amazon somewhere. And then we're going to start diving into the reviews and we're going to start looking at features or maybe look at some videos, we're going to do all that stuff, right?

So I think there's a gap between buying that product from a consumer standpoint and then when we get to B2B products, that it's like, wait a minute, that doesn't exist. Or what may have started to now, but there's an expectation to say, well I bought my iPhone case like this, but I want to buy my stainless tanks or I want to buy my safety product or I want to buy whatever inside the, do you guys feel that what your customers were saying?
Rohan:
Yeah, absolutely. Look the demographic of the industrial buyer has changed significantly, right? If you look at Amazon, almost 70% of all product search begins on Amazon. I think there was an interview of Google's CEO and they asked him, who's your biggest competitor in search. And they said Amazon. They didn't say Bing,