Ajit Patil, Founder, DeepTek

Go to market strategy and structuring appropriate channel partnerships remains the most critical factor for the growth of a B2B tech business. In the past, we have conducted events in partnership with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. With these events, the community gave us strong thumbs up and motivated us to tread on this path. Apart from events and webinars, we are pleased to launch another activity under GTMDialogues ©, wherein we plan to conduct interviews with B2B Tech companies who have displayed early growth and structured strong channel partnerships. The idea here is to enable peer to peer learning and help startups avoid pitfalls as they execute on their GTM plans. This initiative would not be limited to founder’s though, we will attempt to interview reputed resellers, system integrators, channel partners, etc. so that it becomes a discovery platform for startups to find rights partners and learn how to engage with them.

For our first interview session, Mr. Ajit Patil, DeepTek, has graciously agreed to be part of this interview. Ajit is an accomplished professional and serial entrepreneur. Before starting DeepTek, he earlier founded Vertex Software which became one of the leading Indian IT services players focused on the Japanese market. Vertex had a strategic equity partnership with Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and was eventually acquired by NTT DATA — Japan’s leading IT services firm. A few years back Ajit founded DeepTek which is focused on the medical imaging AI space.

Below is a detailed interview with Ajit.

1) Please provide a brief overview of the company and its product offerings?

Ajit: DeepTek is working in the field of Radiology AI. Like autonomous driving, autonomous radiology has a huge market opportunity. Sometime in the coming future, when one takes a medical scan like say MRI, CT, X-Ray — one won’t have to wait for a radiologist to study the scan and write a clinical report. The machine itself will automatically analyze the scan and print a comprehensive clinical report for you. At DeepTek we are working on this vision.

Enabling full autonomy is going to be a long long journey with several difficult hurdles like regulatory approvals. Especially in the healthcare space regulatory approvals are complex, time-consuming and expensive. As a result of some of these challenges, there is hardly any commercial adoption of AI technology in real-world radiology practice today. At DeepTek we have a unique go-to-market approach where AI and Humans work in tandem to create concrete value for hospitals, radiologists, and patients. This has helped us enable commercial adoption.

2) What is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) / target customer? Please also add some flavor to the geography of these customers and the size of the customers (MSME, mid-sized or large enterprises).

Ajit: Hospitals and radiology imaging centers are our end customers. Our offerings are being used by both large and small hospitals. We are currently servicing about 50 hospital and imaging centers globally.

We also have a specialized solution for public health screening programs. Government health bodies are our customers here. Our solution currently is being used for Tuberculosis public screening programs in several cities globally. Recently we have also expanded this offering with a COVID suspect screening solution as well.

3)Does your product require any integration efforts or customization, while deploying solutions at customers end ?

Ajit: Our SaaS offering is a cloud-hosted service. It needs to integrate with the systems in the hospitals. When a scan (like CT, MRI, X-ray) is taken, the scan needs to be pushed into our cloud solution and also the results from our solution needs to be pushed back into the hospital systems. We have a reciprocal scan system where the scan gets pushed into the cloud and the results are sent back to the hospital. All of this happens instantaneously and works like magic.

For enabling this integration — we have a ‘Gateway’ solution that is installed in the hospital premise. The Gateway solution is built in such a way that it is ‘plug-&-play’ — very easy to install and configure. With this, we are able to onboard new hospitals with just a few hours of deployment efforts.

We also have a ‘Technology product’ offering which is largely sold via multinational channel partners. Channel partners take the responsibility of installation and commissioning our solutions.

4)How are you currently generating leads for your organization (inbound vs. outbound)? What strategy is working best for you? Do you think your lead generation strategy would evolve as your organization grows ?

Ajit: We are in the 2nd year of our operations. In the early period, our lead generation was largely focused on leveraging the network of co-founders, investors, customers, and well wishes. Also, we have built a solid sales team that has relevant experience and connections in the radiology industry.

Over the period we also have been able to successfully build channel partnership relationships with large multinationals. This has helped us leverage their global sales network and customer relationships enabling faster reach and business growth.

We have been also participating in leading national and international exhibitions. This has helped us connect well with the ecosystem and establish our presence.

We are now investing considerably in digital marketing and targeting to strengthen our inbound lead generation process. But the key sales channel has been word of mouth. Hospitals and radiologists are extremely happy with the service and they are referring to other people and organizations as well.

5)Do you work with channel partners to acquire customers ? Could you profile such channel partners ? How do you go about looking for such channel partners?

Ajit: Yes, channel partnerships have worked very well for us. NTT DATA Japan is our strategic equity investor and one of our key channel partners. NTT group has a very strong sales network and established customer relationships across the globe. Through them we have been able to reach out to the global markets very efficiently. In a short time now we are in active discussions with several prospects across Japan, ANZ, APAC, EMEA and Africa region.

In the Indian market, we have region-wise channel partnerships with smaller but select players. Strong relationships and experience in the Radiology industry has been the prime criteria for selecting such partners. Participation in exhibitions, digital branding and also references / relationships have helped us connect with such partners. We are continually onboarding new partners.

6)What kind of engagement models have you evaluated to work with Channel partners? What has worked best in your context?

Ajit: For now we have two models — Alliance Partner and Referral partners.

Alliance partners are close strategic relationships with usually large multinational organizations. We have complementary offerings and together enable greater value for the customers. Alliance partners have strong sales networks and relationships with customers. We get to leverage this enabling faster global reach and growth.

Alliance partners get to leverage our cutting edge solutions to widen their offerings and deepen customer relationships..

Referral partners are usually smaller firms/individuals who have strong customer connections in a specific geography. We have a revenue-sharing model with such partners. Referral partnerships help us increase our geography coverage without having to invest in the foot on the ground.

7) Do you have a dedicated person to explore channel partnership ? If not, do you plan to bring someone on board ?

Ajit: Co-founders are responsible for bringing in alliance partners. We have been lucky to have strong strategic equity partners who have become our natural partners. Also, references from our strategic equity partners have helped us to credible partners.

Referral partners come largely through our sales teams or approach us through inbound channels.

We have dedicated leads to manage and groom our ‘strategic associations’.

8)What is your current revenue mix between direct customers vs. through channel partners ? How is this expected to evolve over a period of time?

Ajit: Most of our business last year was through direct customers. However, going ahead we see that changing rapidly.

We have two offerings — our SaaS offering which is currently focused on the Indian market will largely remain direct. However, our ‘Technology Product’ sales which targets the global markets are largely driven by our channel partners.

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