Latest news with #SocialPilot
Entrepreneur
3 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
SaaS Startup SocialPilot Acquired by Sweden's group.one in USD 50 Mn Deal
Despite the acquisition, SocialPilot's leadership and operations will remain unchanged. Founders Bagadiya and Mehta will continue to lead the company independently. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. In a landmark moment for India's software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecosystem, SocialPilot, a bootstrapped social media marketing platform founded in 2014, has been acquired by Swedish digital solutions provider The deal, valued at over USD 50 million, represents one of the most significant exits for a founder-led and venture-free SaaS company in India. Started by Jimit Bagadiya and Tejas Mehta, SocialPilot was built with a clear mission: to help small businesses manage their social media with efficiency and affordability. Without raising any external capital, the startup grew into a globally used platform offering a suite of tools for scheduling posts, managing accounts, collaborating with teams, and generating analytics across channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. Today, the company boasts nearly USD 10 million in annual recurring revenue and serves customers across North America, Europe, and Asia. Its lean yet distributed team and product-led growth model have made it a standout example of capital-efficient SaaS success. The acquisition comes as looks to strengthen its suite of digital tools for small and midsize businesses. The Sweden-based company currently serves over two million SMBs with services spanning cloud hosting, website building, and digital marketing. Adding SocialPilot to its portfolio will enhance its capabilities in the growing space of marketing automation. "SocialPilot's customer-centric and product-led approach strongly aligns with our vision of empowering small businesses," said a spokesperson from "Their journey proves that world-class SaaS doesn't need to come from Silicon Valley or require millions in VC funding." Despite the acquisition, SocialPilot's leadership and operations will remain unchanged. Founders Bagadiya and Mehta will continue to lead the company independently. "We didn't set out to get acquired. We set out to build a product that truly helps small businesses grow," said Bagadiya. "This partnership allows us to do that at a much larger scale—without compromising our values of simplicity, sustainability, and customer obsession." The deal underscores a growing shift in India's tech narrative, where bootstrapped firms are showing that profitability and global relevance can be achieved without external funding.
Mint
6 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Bootstrapped nation: How SocialPilot, a tiny company from Ahmedabad, found success
Bengaluru: Jimit Bagadiya used to walk three kilometres to college to save ₹2.50. The bus from Tapovan to Law Garden in Ahmedabad wasn't expensive. But most days, if no friend offered a ride, he walked. No headphones. Just a backpack, the sound of traffic, and the question he still asks himself today: 'Do I need to spend this?" 'That ₹2.50 bus lives in my mind," he says now. Not fondly. Just plainly. He doesn't remember what the coins were saved for. Maybe a chai. Maybe a photocopy. But the calculation stuck. Not to deny himself—but to be sure. Back then, it was more than just a habit. His family couldn't afford to cover all his college expenses. The ₹12,000 annual fees came partly from home. The rest he scraped together himself: through scholarships, savings, and the small act of walking. Even after SocialPilot Technologies, the social media management platform he built, crossed $9.7 million in annual revenue this year, and was acquired by a Swedish digital solutions company, just last week, the instinct didn't change. When he spends now—on a cab, a hire, a marketing tool—he's not asking 'can I afford it?' He's asking: 'Should this be spent?' 'Frugality today isn't about saying no," he says. 'It's about being intentional." The walk wasn't about struggle. It was about control. And he never unlearned it. Joy of missing out India's startup story revolves around scale—funding rounds, unicorn badges, initial public offerings (IPOs). But in a country where millions dream of building something of their own, most won't raise capital. They won't make it to Shark Tank. They won't chase blitzscale. Some will still build—quietly, profitably, and for the long haul. We already know the famous exceptions: Zoho. Zerodha. Wingify. But their stories are often admired, not studied. Treated as myths, and not methods. The term 'bootstrapping' floats by like ideology, rarely as an actual operating system. Bagadiya's story sits in that space, between the spotlight and the unseen. He built SocialPilot from Ahmedabad—without investors, without pedigree, without any playbook. Announcing the acquisition, called SocialPilot a 'trusted solution for social media marketing tailored to the needs of small businesses and agencies." While neither company disclosed the financial terms of the deal, two people with direct knowledge of the transaction, who didn't want to be identified, confirmed that the enterprise value was over $50 million. But the number isn't the point. The point is what Bagadiya didn't trade. What staying bootstrapped gave him: independence, clarity, and staying power. What it cost. What it preserved. And why it matters—not just for him, but for every founder who wonders if scale is the only measure of success. This isn't a story about one startup. It's about a different way of building—what author Bo Burlingham once called a 'small giant'. Ankit Dudhwewala, co-founder of Appitsimple, a cloud telephony platform, sees a quiet momentum gathering. His company, also based in Ahmedabad, has been bootstrapped for over a decade, now clocking $8 million in revenue—and aiming for $20 million and IPO readiness in the next three years. He believes exits like SocialPilot and Wingify prove something bootstrapped founders have always intuited. 'Bootstrapping can sometimes give founders better financial outcomes than fundraising," he says. 'It's like what Freakonomics says—you're more likely to live well as a dentist than an actor. Funding gets all the attention. But bootstrapping builds staying power." For Dudhwewala, the biggest challenge in bootstrapping isn't building—it's tuning out the noise. 'You only know if you did the right thing in hindsight," he says. 'But outcomes like Jimit's make it easier." He adds: 'None of us—me, Jimit, Sparsh (co-founder of Wingify), Paras (co-founder of Wingify)—are chasing fame. We just want to build sustainable businesses that last. We've moved from the fear of missing out to the joy of missing out." Just a rhythm Bagadiya's first exposure to business wasn't software. It was his father's kirana and garment shop in Ahmedabad. He grew up watching margins, inventory, and what it meant to serve regulars. It wasn't a startup story. But it taught him how small businesses survive—and what they quietly endure. Then came Creative Glance. Not a startup, or even a company, really. Just Bagadiya, freelancing under a name. Designing Joomla templates, customizing WordPress plugins, setting up small e-commerce stores for US clients he never met. The work came through blog posts, open-source forums, and the occasional job board listing. 'It was just a rhythm," he says. 'A few emails, get paid, move on." From 2007 to 2014, that rhythm kept the lights on. He was 23 when he started. Ahmedabad was building its own tech orbit. There were no venture capitalists (VCs) walking into co-working spaces. But there were poster assignments. One of Bagadiya's first jobs was at a call centre—designing posters for walk-in traffic, the kind that promised 'job openings" or 'join our training batch today" in bold, laminated fonts. He wasn't on the phone floor. But he saw what happened there. 'There were no tools," he remembers. 'People were using spreadsheets and WhatsApp to follow up with leads. You never knew who had spoken to whom." Years later, that memory would shape SocialPilot's multi-user collaboration features. The money from Creative Glance wasn't big, but it came in clean cycles. Two-month projects. Dollar inflows. No sales team. No accounts receivable mess. Just work in, money out. He never took out a bank loan. The office rent paid itself. Salaries were manageable. The only capital needed was for personal life. So when he and Tejas Vyas, his co-founder, began sketching out SocialPilot in 2014, they didn't build around funding. They built around cashflow. Their first customer came at a startup demo night in Ahmedabad. There was no onboarding flow. No website with pricing tiers. Just Bagadiya, his laptop, a working product, and a PayPal link. It was enough. In 2016, they joined Upekkha—a revenue-focused software as a service (SaaS) accelerator based in India. Here, they learnt retention frameworks, how to measure churn, think in cohorts, track activation, understand why a user stayed—or left. But the DNA didn't change. Bagadiya didn't buy tools he couldn't justify. Still believed that good marketing didn't need a splashy funnel—it needed clarity. The only metric that mattered was whether the customer came back. The deliberate one Bagadiya and Vyas were in college together. Their paths diverged thereafter. Vyas moved to the US and joined Cognizant. Bagadiya stayed back and built a digital agency from scratch in Ahmedabad. But they never lost touch. Even before SocialPilot was born, Vyas was quietly showing up—in client calls, in product feedback, in late-night conversations. 'He had a natural way of understanding the customer's mindset and framing things clearly," Bagadiya says. 'He always helped, never made it transactional." By 2014, when SocialPilot started taking shape, that quiet support had already laid the foundation for trust. Vyas understood what Bagadiya was trying to solve. He saw the market gap. More importantly, he saw Bagadiya's rhythm—and matched it. That's when he joined full time. Their division of labour was clear. Bagadiya owned product, engineering, and marketing. Vyas ran everything customer-facing—support, sales, partnerships. But that surface-level split doesn't explain what made the partnership work. They didn't just divide roles. They absorbed each other's blind spots. 'I'm the fast executor," Bagadiya says. 'He's the deliberate one." That difference became crucial as the company matured. Especially during the acquisition process. Bagadiya never enjoyed external conversations. He preferred staying deep in the product. So when inbound interest started—from private equity firms and strategic platforms—Vyas handled everything: the early calls, the evaluations, the intent checks. He spoke to over 20 investment bankers. Shortlisted seven. Sat through their decks. Cross-checked references. And only then looped Bagadiya in. 'He played the long game," Bagadiya says. 'Patient, measured, always absorbing pressure." It wasn't just diligence—it was foresight. Vyas ensured their quality of earnings was complete even before any offer came in. He led the data rooms. Prepped every document. Flagged every clause in the share purchase agreement. By the time entered with a serious offer, they weren't scrambling. They were ready. 'There were days I wanted to walk away," Bagadiya says. 'He never dismissed it. He just laid out the facts and let me process." The exit may have given their story a headline. But the shaping of the company—who it served, how it operated—was already Vyas' imprint. Years earlier, he had restructured the roadmap. Removed bloated features; rebuilt the user interface for clarity; formalized feedback loops between support and product; introduced internal hygiene. Bagadiya admits he wouldn't have prioritized these. And perhaps most crucially, he modelled how to make decisions slowly—and well. Saying no to scale The offers had come before. Some early in the pandemic; others as the annual revenue run rate (ARR) crossed $5 million. The numbers looked solid. The brands were credible. And still, the founders said no. Not because they were trying to prove a point. But because they didn't want what would come with it. 'Why bring another boss over our heads?" Bagadiya says. This was a deeply held belief, shaped by both temperament and upbringing. They had grown up in Gujarat, where business wasn't something you built on debt. You spent what you earned. You scaled only as far as your profits allowed. At Creative Glance, his services business, Bagadiya never spent before earning. SocialPilot followed the same rhythm. The hesitation wasn't about valuation either. It was about distortion. The fear that outside capital would change the tempo they had learned to survive by. That chasing growth would come at the cost of product clarity, team sanity, or customer alignment. At one point, an acquisition offer looked appealing—but Bagadiya turned it down because he didn't feel he could deliver the kind of return that would justify the investor's expectations. 'If I haven't delivered value to the investor," he says in one interview, 'then I've broken my commitment." So they kept building. On their terms. With their constraints. And when inbound investor interest surfaced, Vyas would share only partial numbers—test the intent, read the room. If the response felt off, they moved on. 'We didn't bootstrap because we were brave," Bagadiya says. 'We didn't know how to raise." But that limitation became design. And then it became principle. Control didn't mean micromanaging every task. It meant guarding the shape of the company. Saying no to features that looked good in pitch decks but didn't help real users. Saying no to scale that came too fast for the systems to catch up. Saying no to speed if it came at the cost of clarity. 'My customer is my god," Bagadiya once said. 'Not my investor." Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan, co-founder of Upekkha, the SaaS accelerator SocialPilot joined in 2016, called it a signal of deeper change. 'It just establishes the phase shift of Indian entrepreneurship," he says. 'The initial wave needed big founder mythology and therefore signalling was rampant. Now founders like Jimit/Tejas succeed on execution alone. No IIT/IIM or Stanford signalling, no investor anointment, just ARR. Culmination of the Aam Admi Founder." When it nearly broke They were steady, profitable, in control. But there were moments when it almost didn't matter. In 2021, Facebook released the long-awaited Instagram Graph API, which enables businesses and creators to manage their presence on the social media site. But access was restricted. Only select premium partners were allowed in. SocialPilot wasn't one of them. Until then, they had been holding their own against competitors like Buffer and Hootsuite. But Instagram's explosion—and their absence from it—was a blow. Customers began to churn. Morale wavered. Growth hit a wall. They scrambled. Reached out to Facebook contacts. Navigated a year and a half of compliance reviews and technical walkthroughs. They were close—one internal nod away from inclusion. And then came the Facebook data breach in April 2021—the personal information of over 533 million users were leaked. Everything froze. No new partners. No roadmap. Just silence. Inside SocialPilot, conversations turned serious. Should they halt hiring? Enter maintenance mode? Pivot entirely? 'It wasn't poor execution," Bagadiya says. 'It was just completely out of our hands." What saved them was not luck. They were profitable, which meant they had time. So they fell back on the only thing that had never failed them: listening to customers. Vyas went back to agencies and small businesses. What else did they need? What felt broken? What was overpriced or hard to use? From those conversations came something unexpected—a review management tool. It wasn't part of the original roadmap. But it was aligned with their original mission: build what small businesses can actually use. They built it fast, and shipped it quietly. And it gave them just enough headroom to breathe again. Then, in March 2024, came the second blow. Google rolled out a core algorithm update. SocialPilot's organic traffic—carefully built over 11 years of content, search engine optimization, and goodwill—collapsed. They hadn't taken shortcuts. No black-hat tricks. No spammy backlinks. Just long form explainers, helpful guides, clean metadata. But overnight, they lost visibility, trials slowed and growth flatlined. For a few weeks, Bagadiya couldn't sleep. Their playbook—built on content and patience—was gone. So they pivoted again. They ramped up paid marketing. Retooled landing pages. Built a brand team from scratch. Partnered with influencers. Started showing up in places they'd long ignored. It worked—eventually. But Bagadiya doesn't describe that recovery as a win. He talks about it as a reckoning. 'Those two events taught us where the walls really are," he says. 'That you can do everything right—and still get blindsided." They didn't change their DNA. But they understood the terrain better. Platform risk was real. Ecosystem volatility was real. And the only way to survive it wasn't to play the game faster—but to stay light enough to pivot, again and again, when the game changed. Slack updates When the term sheet finally came from Bagadiya was in Ahmedabad. There was just a WhatsApp message from Vyas, a link to the management deck, and a calendar invite to update the presentation. By the time the papers were signed—3.5 months later—they had scaled from $9.1 million to $9.7 million in ARR. The enterprise value came in at $55 million: $43 million upfront in cash, the rest in milestone-based earn-outs. It was clean. Structured. Done. But it didn't feel like an exit. There was no celebration. No email to the team with fireworks. Just Slack updates, onboarding of collaborators, and the same roadmap sprint continuing. Even the attention, when it came, felt misplaced. Classmates and acquaintances messaged to ask how much the deal was for. Not how it happened. Not what it took. Just a number. 'It became awkward fast," he says. 'And the attention faded just as quickly." Still on the dashboard After the acquisition, nothing really changed. Bagadiya still opens Slack first thing in the morning; checks feature flags; reviews copy and support conversations. He listens closely on integration calls—not for strategy, but for drift. What the customer said. What the team heard. Whether something might be slipping. During one product review, someone asked if they should wait for the team to weigh in. Bagadiya said no. 'They'll learn how we work by watching how we work." When people ask if the journey is done, Bagadiya doesn't say yes or no. What started with a ₹2.50 bus ride runs the same way: one line of copy, one fix, one decision at a time. The founder's still on the dashboard.
