As a female founder, Ramesh is taking on industry Golithahs like SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite with her next-generation cloud-based, digital, supply chain management platform. Her vision is to fill the gaps that industry giants ignore
Suruchi Ramesh started her supply chain management platform, GRID powered by Suuchi, by bootstrapping it in 2017.
Within a few years, she raised $9 million in angel and venture capital investments to make GRID a significant player in the supply chain sector, reported Forbes.
As a female founder, Ramesh is taking on industry Golithahs like SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite with her next-generation cloud-based, digital, supply chain management platform. Her vision is to fill the gaps that industry giants ignore.
Born and educated in India, Ramesh is a hardcore geek with academic and professional credentials, reports Forbes. Intel recruited her to work in the US in predictive analytics.
Later, she worked for two supply-chain analytics startups that grew into unicorns. While her career started on the technical side, she moved into account management and sales.
Her grandfather was a successful manufacturer of motorbikes and employed thousands in India, while her father tried things but failed.
“I saw both sides,” said Ramesh, and she learned lessons from both. “I always had an itch to do my own thing. I wanted agency and control of my ship.”
“Whether a company is $10 million in size or $10 billion, the supply chain is the most complex part of an organization because of the huge volume and variety of data,” said Ramesh.
“Eighty percent of participants interacting with the supply chain are outside the organization.”
GRID digitizes and connects the entire supply chain, including suppliers, factories, brands, retailers, warehouses, and customers. Forget difficult-to-use legacy systems.
GRID combines product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, making collaborating intuitive across different procurement functions easy.
While Ramesh’s vision was big from the get-go, she started small in one vertical—fashion— with one product.
She connected brands and retailers with factories and suppliers.
“The need for solutions was heavier in fashion, and there was a lot of demand,” said Ramesh.
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Ramesh learned to be strategic about growing revenue from clients. Customers may start small, but as they see the value in the platform, they want other capabilities that require customization and additional fees.
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Customers add other GRID offerings. The platform is a two-sided market. When you sign a customer, their supply relationships often come with them
“We added 400 brands and hundreds of factories in the first two years.” When beauty cosmetics were added, they became GRID’s No 1 industry, followed by fashion.
Other verticals include direct-to-consumer sectors like home goods, pet supplies, shoes, and the components needed to manufacture beauty cosmetics.
Ramesh received real-time feedback from customers and evolved the product.
She bootstrapped the first couple of years, exhausting her savings and 401(k), then using profits to fund the business.
But it wasn’t enough to fuel all necessary research and development.
Equity investments happened organically.
A conversation about the challenge of financing R&D with a relatively new customer resulted in an angel investment and a close friendship.
The customer invested $.5 million in two tranches and periodically lent Ramesh money.
Having customer traction, enabled Ramesh to raise about $8 million in venture capital from Edison Partners.
As BCG research has shown, female-founded startups generated 78 cents in revenue for every dollar of investment raised, compared to 31 cents for male-founded startups, so investing in female founders is good business.
Ramesh learned to be strategic about growing revenue from clients. Customers may start small, but as they see the value in the platform, they want other capabilities that require customization and additional fees.
Customers add other GRID offerings. The platform is a two-sided market. When you sign a customer, their supply relationships often come with them.
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