As a founder, it’s not every day that you can increase your capital raise by 40% over the maximum span of eight minutes.
But that is the reality for Louisville-based Xena Intelligence and its founder/CEO Akhil Suresh Nair.
On Aug. 28, Nair won a regional competition for the Startup World Cup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, out of eight finalists (after initially being chosen out of approximately 600 applicants), he said. The victory punched Xena’s ticket to the event’s grand finale from Oct. 2-4 in San Francisco — where one winner will walk away with $1 million in funding.
Run by Silicon Valley-based Pegasus Tech Ventures, the event is massive based on the statistics provided on its site: More than 50,000 attendees, more than 2,500 investors present — and winners from more than 100 regionals.
“I get on the stage, my heart starts pounding. I get fearful — but being an entrepreneur, you have no option but to put yourself out there and pitch. I think it’s just one of those character-building experiences that one has to go through. And I’m very fortunate to get opportunities like this to do that.” — Akhil Suresh Nair
In the regional format, Nair had five minutes to present, followed by five minutes to answer questions from a panel of judges. In the final pitch competition, he will receive four minutes to present and four minutes of time for questions from the judges.
What makes the story even more remarkable is the fact that Nair has battled stage fright since he was a child.
“I get on the stage, my heart starts pounding,” Nair said. “I get fearful — but being an entrepreneur, you have no option but to put yourself out there and pitch. I think it’s just one of those character-building experiences that one has to go through. And I’m very fortunate to get opportunities like this to do that.”
He added that the biggest way he has been able to address the issue is simply by slowing down and not forcing himself to say as much as possible within the pitch’s allotted time frame.
“With limited attention spans, one has to force oneself to speak slower,” said Nair, who was named one of our Forty Under 40 honorees in 2023. “That kind of gives a big boost to a lot of people who wish to public speak.”
Numbers keep going up
A winner of our 2023 KY Inno Startups to Watch, Xena Intelligence uses AI and automation through its platform to help brands grow on e-commerce platforms on Amazon and Walmart.com.
I first profiled Xena back in November 2022. At the time, the company had 32 e-commerce clients, 20 of which were paying customers (it currently offers baseline services at no costs). Now, it has 250 clients, 55 of which are paying customers.
Four of the companies he works with are based out of Louisville: Modica, A Taste of Kentucky, Derby Fit and The Charming Turtle.
Since its founding, Xena has been able to help its clients gain annual collective sales of approximately $260 million (it was $38 million in 2022). Furthermore, the company is managing $52 million in ads on Amazon, up from $7 million in 2022.
The company has annual recurring revenue of approximately $672,000.
As of recent date, Xena Intelligence has raised approximately $2.5 million since its founding in 2021. The company is currently in the midst of a $750,000 seed round, after raising a pre-seed round of $1.5 million.
“I felt that — since I am fundraising right now — it would be a good way to put out the word and also raise funds as well,” said Nair, who added that approximately 20% of his funding has come from winning pitch competitions.
In February, Nair made some noise in both the local and national entrepreneurial ecosystem by beginning to charge potential investors a fee to few his pitch deck. As of a recent date, he said he has been able to generate $45,000 alone — although he admitted that most founders he talks to about it are still skeptical.
Even if he does not take home the $1 million in funding, Nair will be able to make connections with investors and founders from around the world.
“I think just getting that investor or customer or well-wisher or advisor to be interested in what I’m building, I think that could be far more valuable than the $1 million itself,” he said.
Nair said that he first became aware of the competition through Patrick Henshaw, the managing director of Render Capital. Nair first moved to Louisville — from the Boston metro area — as one of the requirements from accepting the $100,000 in funding after being named one of the winners of the 2021 Render Competition.
Over the years, the startup has taken part in a Techstars (in New York in 2022) accelerator and has been a winner of the Community Foundation of Louisville’s Vogt Awards in 2022.
Recently, the company has launched Xenalytics, which is a real-time e-commerce analytics reporting tool for its clients.
“We figured since we manage more than 50,000 products on Amazon and we collect so much data, that could be very useful to these large companies — for them to make decisions on their current products, to better understand their competition and take positions based on [the data],” Nair said.
