Sales has evolved significantly over the years, transitioning from personal visits to phone calls and, more recently, email dominance. As businesses continue to adapt to new technologies and customer expectations, one must ask: What’s next? The answer lies in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
AI is revolutionizing the sales process by automating repetitive tasks, personalizing customer interactions, and providing insights for smart decision-making.
Enter FlowWorks AI, a Delaware and Bengaluru-based company founded in 2021 by Sarthak Srivastava and Sudipta Biswas.
“FlowWorks builds AI sales force for companies to automate sales,” notes Srivastava.
Specializing in sales development, Floworks AI provides companies with tools to streamline prospecting, lead research, and outreach across multiple platforms.
Floworks AI was born out of shared frustration with the mundane for co-founder Srivastava and Vishwas. Their professional experiences exposed them to operational tasks—essential, but tedious, from updating CRMs to Jira tickets, explains Srivastava.
Determined to find a better way, the pair set out to build a solution that would automate the mundane. And thus, Floworks AI came to life.
AI employees
B2B sales cycles are long, starting with generating leads to attract and engage potential customers. Success in these cycles depends on effective sales calls, CRM tools, and strategic use of platforms like Gmail and LinkedIn to send the right content, as well as tools like Apollo and ZoomInfo to target prospects.
By combining these tools with a solution that can handle the possibility—it eliminates the need for humans to do it manually, explains Srivastava.
Floworks AI’s flagship product, Alisha, is an AI Sales Development Representative (SDR) that automates the sales process. Alisha can research ideal customer profiles, find prospect lists, research each prospect on web resources, write highly personalized emails, and coordinate scheduling to book sales calls.
The startup’s ThorV2 architecture powers Alisha. ThorV2 is specifically designed to enhance the function-calling capabilities of large language models (LLMs).
Imagine an LLM as a talented writer who understands stories well. They can write wonderful stories, but they need help with things like drawing pictures or checking facts. Function-calling is like giving the author the ability to ask for help from an artist or researcher.
This allows LLMs to create richer, more informative outputs by using other tools to perform specific tasks beyond their capabilities.
Essentially, ThorV2 is a system that helps AI models use tools and tasks more effectively.
Another product from Flowork, Flowy, is an AI executive assistant that helps people stay on top of their schedules by managing tasks through simple commands.
Business overview
The startup’s solution is similar to “employee recruitment,” but instead, an AI is hiring employees, notes Srivastava.
Each AI worker is designed to perform a specific set of tasks, and the cost depends on the type and workload of the AI ​​worker.
For example, if a business hires an AI SDR, its performance is measured by the number of effective outreaches it can complete in a month. This includes researching prospects online, following up, addressing objections, and scheduling meetings.
There are essentially three plans: $250 for 1,000 email outreaches without database access; $500, which includes email, LinkedIn, and full database access for broad access; and the Enterprise plan, which offers custom pricing based on usage with bulk discounts (20-40%) for large orders (more than 10 seats).
The startup offers inbound and outbound SDRs, both branded as Alisha, which are fully functional and available to customers. Additionally, it is in the beta phase for its Revenue Operations and Success bots, which some customers have already tested.
Srivastava explains that human SDRs typically achieve a meeting conversion rate of 0.75% to 1%, with factors such as human inefficiency affecting results. In contrast, its AI solution consistently achieves high conversion rates, often 6% to 10% per campaign, significantly outperforming human SDRs, he adds.
Where is the opportunity?
Currently, the startup’s customer base is mainly located in India and the US, with some in Canada. It is primarily serving software companies with SaaS and IT services in the mid-market and enterprise segments.
According to Srivastava, America is leading in terms of revenue, while India is leading in terms of number of customers. In terms of business segmentation, he notes that about 70% comes from North America, 30% comes from India.
For the next two quarters, the startup will focus on North America and India, the former being the largest market for the SaaS and SDR industries, accounting for more than 70% of the global market, the co-founder says.
“When we get to the end of next year, we will start expanding into the European markets, because there is a strong interest in using a solution like ours,” he commented.
So far, Floworks AI is serving 50 B2B customers, and by the end of December, the startup expects to have around 100-110 businesses using its solution, explains Srivastava.
Companies like Lyzr, 11x.ai, Artisan, and Luru are its overall competitors.
According to Srivastava, Floworks AI is working with its “wish list” customers — companies like Gong, OpenAI, HP, and some of the biggest banks in India and the US — by closing deals and getting them started with its solutions.
Future direction
The company, which was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 (YC W23) and Entrepreneur First India’s BA6 batch, has raised $1.55 million from investors such as Piper Serica and Y Combinator.
Floworks AI has started its Series A funding talks, Srivastava says.
“We have started our Series A negotiations, and plan to secure it in Q1, or March, of next year. This funding will allow us to double down on growth and work towards achieving the $10 million ARR mark,” he noted.
According to the co-founder, who talked about “a lot of insider interest,” the startup, which is nearing the $1 million ARR mark, is aiming to raise in the $10-18 million range.
“It’s not the co-founders who plan the Series A or subsequent rounds; it’s driven by customers and market forces,” he emphasized, adding, “Our market has become too hot”.
Following the fundraising, Floworks AI plans to enhance its AI capabilities by developing voice solutions for AI-powered calling, introducing multilingual support, and expanding ThorV2’s functionality to handle a wider range of human-like tasks.
The startup, which currently has a team of 16 members focused primarily on the technical side, aims to strengthen its US presence by establishing a local sales team to drive growth and revenue.
Floworks AI was part of TechSparks 2024, your story’s flagship tech startup event was held in Bengaluru recently, and made it your storyTech30 list as one of the 30 most promising Indian startups of 2024.