Suresh Sambandam’s Journey: From Humble Beginnings to Building Kissflow

“Keep it simple, stupid!” is the philosophy that drives Kissflow, a Delaware-incorporated, cloud-based workflow automation firm that boasts 10,000 customers globally.

Their clientele includes giants like Pepsi, Airbus, Danone, Comcast, Reckitt Benckiser, and Michelin. Also, it is heavily speculated that the company is now operating on an ARR of $10 million.

We bet you’re wondering who’s the person behind this immense success? Meet Suresh Sambandam, the Founder and CEO of Kissflow.

Having traversed through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, he’s gone on to become a name to reckon with in the low-code software solutions arena.

A resident of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, Suresh’s roots stem from his humble beginnings. He couldn’t attend college after graduating with the equivalent of a 12th-grade education as he had to help his father with their family business. In this aspect, Suresh is largely self-taught and self-made. 

While he didn’t finish college, he was eager to learn about computers and technology. His curiosity led him to start a small training center in his hometown at the age of 19. Suresh spent years learning many software and technology skills. All of his hard work and dedication led to a job in Hewlett Packard (HP), Bengaluru. This experience helped set the course for Suresh’s future in the technology space. 

Thereafter, he joined Determine (erstwhile Selectica), where he led his own team. However, the company was acquired by Accenture in 2003. At this juncture, Suresh had a decision to make.

Instead of continuing his innings in the corporate world, he decided to take the entrepreneurial route.

Little did he know his life was about to change. In the same year, he built his first company, OrangeScape, a self-funded Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) business.

By 2011, Suresh was going places in the PaaS industry and became instrumental in enabling the Indian cloud industry to go global. Things were about to get better. In 2012, OrangeScape raised $1 million from the Indian Angels Network. 

Challenges, Reinvention, and Marketing

As they say, it’s not a good story if it has no twists. Suresh’s journey isn’t without its share of twists (aka challenges) either. But, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. 

Kissflow started out in India as OrangeScape Technologies. It was established with the aim of building software solutions that required low code or no code.

However, users weren’t ready for this kind of an advanced platform and hesitated to use this new technology. But, Suresh and his team at OrangeScape were not ones to give up easily. They chose to pivot. 

In 2010, Suresh and team began to develop workflow software. Meanwhile, the low-code wave was starting to gain popularity at the same time, prompting Suresh to re-enter this industry. It seemed like all of this was in the stars. This time around, users eagerly adopted this technology, and Kissflow started making its presence felt in the market. 

Kissflow focussed its attention on medium-to-large-size companies, helping them set up and organize their business processes. How? KIssflow identified the gap between customer-facing software and backend software solutions systems.

They recognized that the middle-office systems, like reimbursement applications, were unique to each company and could do with some serious automation. Accordingly, they worked to develop automation solutions to plug this glaring gap. There was no turning back from there. 

Today, large institutions with thousands of employees, like the Bank of the Philippine Islands leverage Kissflow to automate and systematize processes that previously used emails for approvals.

Success stories like these kept Suresh and his team going, and they continued to focus on building technology like never before. As a result, the marketing aspect was largely ignored, a factor that proved to be troublesome for the company. 

No wonder he said, “Most products do not succeed in India because of the lack of marketing knowledge.” Here’s the backstory:

In 2013, Suresh had to reinvent Kissflow because of market conditions. He quickly realized that those who had once looked up to him were now creating more wealth and growing more than OrangeScape had.

Were things about to take a turn for the worse? Apparently yes, because by mid-2013, Suresh had almost run out of money and was being written off by the industry.

This was hardly the time to launch a new venture. Or at least this is how most people would think. But not Suresh! He launched KIssflow in June 2013 against all odds. This was done with a view to cater to a niche market: workflow management. This move would go on to be a highly lucrative one for OrangeScape.

Fortunately, he had created intellectual property (IP) through OrangeScape, which was registered and filed. He sold the IP for INR 2 crore to keep the company going until late 2013. 

As Kissflow flourished and thrived, Suresh’s fortunes were revived. Soon, Kissflow struck a deal with a large American company in the packaging industry for $500,000. This meant Kissflow had officially overcome the difficult times and managed to come out a winner. 

This was a time when Suresh reinvented not only his business, but also himself. From being a suit-clad executive, he went on to adopt a more laid approach and decided to start dressing informally.

He opined that brand-building and image-building were crucial aspects in the startup world. If entrepreneurs want their brand to grow, “even the founder should be out there building an image”. Now that’s a marketing lesson to remember!

Kissflow: More Than a Workflow Application

Apart from workflow solutions, Kissflow now offers software for two more business areas: case management and application management.

“Kissflow started with the middle piece and then we added both the case and the apps. It naturally fit into our expansion strategy. We had one piece, now we have all the three pieces,” Suresh said. 

To explain, he gave the example of ChatGPT. Kissflow already offers some of the “scaffolding” that can support snippets of code generated by ChatGPT.

He added that the code generated by ChatGPT won’t directly go into production or be used commercially. However, it can go into an existing software environment provided by Kissflow.

But wait, there’s more to the story. In Suresh’s words, “With respect to Kissflow, not only did we innovate on technology and product management, we also innovated on user experience, an area often missed, and of course most importantly in sales and marketing.”

As per him, Kissflow could reach more than 10,000-plus customers worldwide because of a model called Desk Selling & Marketing (DSM). It enables “a small team of people sitting in a city like Chennai, and not Mumbai, or New York or London, to sell to customers big and small across the globe”.

The DSM model relies heavily on inbound marketing, where potential customers self-select from the various offerings of Kissflow. This removes significant noise, while lowering the acquisition cost. How? Large American corporations like Salesforce usually spend more than $75 to acquire a customer because of their outbound sales. Startups in the SaaS world, on the other hand, spend less than $10 to acquire a customer by selling from the desk. 

“In the US when large companies are doing 18 months of monthly revenue to RoI, we were able to do it in 6-9 months. The inbound marketing model is also tightly coupled with an inside sales process that handles qualification through on-boarding as a customer success process rather than a sales process,” Suresh said. 

Today, Kissflow caters to global companies like Airbus, Pepsi, Jet, Michelin, Jet, Disney, and Casio. Most importantly, all of the selling takes place from a desk set up somewhere in Chennai.

Of Kissflow’s future, Suresh hopes to see it as a $100 million revenue company in the next two to three years.

He wasn’t kidding about this: he has hired executives from companies like IBM, Salesforce, and others to ensure this dream becomes a reality. Apart from this, he wants Kissflow to rank among the top three vendors in its category.

What Makes Kissflow Different?

So what makes Kissflow different from competitors like Appian, Outsystems, or Pega? 

Kissflow is, in essence, a self-service platform that makes it easy for business users to handle configurations without needing to know about programming. It doesn’t even require its clients to hire consulting companies, sparing them a huge expense. 

“Ensure product market fit on a self-service model. The customer signs up, chats with you and is satisfied enough to put down their credit card for your service.”

• Suresh Sambandam

Kissflow boasts the ability to fulfill the workflow automation needs of every team, department, and organization by deploying the most intelligent business process management tools. As a result, it helps drive more efficiency, control, and accountability.

Words from the Wise

Even though Suresh Sambandam never attended college, his real-world experiences have taught him several valuable business lessons, which he’s happy to share with budding entrepreneurs. He opines that the lack of a degree must not keep entrepreneurs from realizing their potential. Here are some words of wisdom straight from the horse’s mouth (as published on Entrepreneur.com).

• Don't study for the test - go deep instead. In business, you need to actively pursue the deep knowledge necessary to solve problems as they arise. Would-be entrepreneurs should seek out mentors to teach them the ropes in their target industry. They should concentrate on diving deep into the subjects they need to become an expert in.
• Give value to individuals, but bet on your team. Once you've gained the skills you need, shift your focus to creating a team you trust to weather the hard times and support your endeavors. Instill in your team the mindset that each of you has something valuable to contribute and that each individual is expected to put in the same high level of effort.
• Chase and solve hard problems. If you solve hard problems, I learned, you never have to chase after customers or venture capital funding - they come to you. Put all your effort into improving your process and developing your products or services, and your company will be more attractive to investors and customers alike.

A “Strong Performer” in Low-Code Development Platforms

Kissflow, a low-code platform built for citizen developers, has come a long way. In Q1 2024, it was recognized as a "Strong Performer" in The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms for Citizen Developers. And the future looks bright.

As per the Forrester report, "Kissflow is elegant, intuitive, and process focused" and "its streamlined developer experience for process automation and workflow is superior, and new UX development tools balance flexibility and ease." 

The Forrester author also said, "Kissflow is an excellent choice for firms enabling democratized process automation at scale and a solid bet for broader future use based on its roadmap and recent investments."

Wrapping Up

As you can tell, Suresh Sambandam’s journey is one of resilience, ambition, and a futuristic outlook. But, there’s more to him than Kissflow. He is a prominent figure in the Indian software industry. Aside from establishing his business, he has co-founded the SaaSBOOMi community. He sees great potential in the Indian SaaS sector and has predicted it to become a thriving trillion-dollar industry. Suresh has seen it all and made it in the entrepreneurship world largely by himself. As the industry is now poised for further growth, Suresh’s vision and zeal continue to inspire Kissflow’s success and support the upward trajectory of India’s SaaS landscape.