Karthick Sriraman is the Enterprise Sales Director, EMEA at Segment, a customer data platform (CDP) that helps you collect, clean, and control your customer data.

With 16+ years of experience in Enterprise Software, Karthick specializes in early-stage SaaS sales where he can apply the cross-functional experience in Enterprise Sales and Solutions Engineering.

Karthick Sriraman joins us on episode 26 of the MOV Podcast to talk about:

• Video-based evangelism in sales
• How can we humanizing outreach
• Some unique use of videos

So, without further ado, tune in to learn more of that fascinating video & sales insights only on the mad video podcast by the guch featuring Karthick Sriraman.

Here’s Pranav, Co-founder at guch speaking to Karthick.

Pranav Chimulkar: Hey guys, welcome to the Mad Over Videos podcast. This is Episode 26. Today’s guest is Karthick Sriraman, he is the Enterprise Sales Director at segment. He is somebody who spent over 16 years in enterprise sales rather than enterprise software. He’s an early SaaS expert, he has built teams ground up, he has seen it also, it will be very interesting for us to have his opinion on this whole thing of using reduced for selling better and selling more rather, which is a problem faced by most businesses. So without much ado, I’d like to add Karthick to the stream. And please welcome Karthick.

Karthick Sriraman: Hey Pranav, thanks for having me on this. Appreciate it. And yeah, thanks to anyone who’s joined as well. Appreciate you.

Pranav Chimulkar: Thank you so much for joining us taking time out of your schedule. I’m sure that you might be in the holiday mood, but then I think taking time out and joining us on this podcast, so I really appreciate it.

Karthick Sriraman: Thank you, likewise.

Pranav Chimulkar: So Karthick, I’d like to start by asking you something? Because I’ve said what was there on your LinkedIn? What are the things that you’ve not put about yourself on LinkedIn? Just give us a background about yourself?

Karthick Sriraman: Sure, yeah. And thanks for that really kind into. That was, you know, I appreciate that. Well, really, if you look at my career, so far, I started off very much as a technologist, as a data engineer. And then at some point, I made the change over to work in sales and go to market initially as a sales engineer, and then as an account executive, from there. And I would say about six years ago, I joined segment, and when I joined the company had maybe 30 people. And now we’re over 600. And we recently also acquired by Twilio. So it’s been quite the journey here for the last six years, or five and a half years. And I started off in San Francisco at the head office. And then about three years ago, I was given the opportunity to move to London and open up our practice here. And that’s how I ended up here.

Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. So the interesting thing about your move from San Francisco to London, was that you’re the first person to start that location, right? You did everything from the GTM, to hiring a new team to even setting up the physical office, like what is that experience?

Karthick Sriraman: The experience is something anybody who gets the chance to do, you should never miss out on it. Because you, you know, the sort of the learning curve you go through is just phenomenal. There are just so many things that you got to think on your feet, learn and kind of pick up and make sure you’re not just doing what is put in front of you. But you got to look at what needs to be done for the company and pretty much take charge of that and do what has to be done. So it was just like a once in a lifetime opportunity and experience. And yeah, I’m really happy to have had that opportunity.

Pranav Chimulkar: Right. Right. So here goes the default question that I asked all my guests on the podcast because the name of the show is Mad Over Videos podcast. I’d like you to explain why is Karthick mad over videos?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah. Yeah. And before I start that, I mean, my love for this is pretty recent. I’m not like a veteran here. But something I’m very excited about. And really, I think it started off, you know, pre-COVID, one of my favorite parts of the role was to really get in front of customers. There’s something to be said, with the energy and the value that you create when you are in front of the customer collaborating with them in a room that when you’re brainstorming ideas, it is just very productive. Right. And that was pretty much taken away overnight. And at that time, I felt like we were basically getting into a state of scarcity because we could no longer get in front of customers. We could not really communicate and collaborate as we did before, which was very effective, right? And then it took me a long time to go from that state of scarcity to really understand that, in fact, we’re in a state of abundance. Now, when it comes to FaceTime, right? Because previously, getting that FaceTime was not easy, either. I mean, that there were travel and scheduling and all of these things. But actually, now, you have just tremendous opportunities to get yourself out there in front of the customer. Because they are used to receiving that sort of video communications from other partners and mentors they work with, and in many ways they expected as well, right? So it took me a long time to really understand our shift from that scarcity to the abundance mode. And it was sort of very recent for me. And I started seeing some very smart people around me do some really cool things with it as well. Right. So that’s really how this came about, and why I was interested to speak with you guys, and so on.

Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, I’m glad you could make it. So I think just because you mentioned, I’d like to take that point a little further, and go into various reasons why people would use videos for sales, in particular, because we’ve always associated the use of videos For Marketing, or for hiring sometimes. It’s never been such an important priority item for sales folks, or revenue people, it’s but like you said, because of COVID, I think things have changed, and handshake has gone away, you are bound to use videos. So I have a few questions about the usage of videos in sales. And I will start off with the first one being, how does video help you break through the inbox?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, I think before kind of getting into that specifically, generally in sales for me, it’s how can we use video to mimic what your relationship and engagement with customers were prior to this? Right. So that’s the sort of lens that I was mainly looking at. And then again, I just saw some folks do some really new things, which was just amazing to see some of the things people were coming up with. So in terms of the inbox, I’ve seen some very special things there as well. And the key is, how do you communicate value as quickly as possible? And I think that’s the key. And for that, we actually don’t need to reinvent the wheel there. If you actually look at the b2c world, they have figured that out really well. You know, there are companies like Netflix and YouTube and Tik Tok, they’re just focused on how do we keep the customer engaged? Sometimes, it’s not so great for the user itself, but like, how long can you keep the user engaged, and so on? So there are some things to learn from that. For example, when you’re opening email or whatever form of communication, how can you quickly communicate value. So some of the things that I’ve seen, there is the use of like GIFs, for example. So when you open up an email, you’re immediately seeing some visual aspect of a value communicated, whether that be via autoplay, or whatever that is. So the recipient isn’t necessarily waiting, or it’s taking a long time, you’re immediately communicating some value, and then you’re kind of building upon it. So I think that’s the key when you’re coming up with these just think about, like, how can you as soon as you can get to that value?

Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, so just in I mean, if you look at them, they’re part of a larger video that you could trim down and then use it. So you could also redirect them to watch the entire video on your YouTube channel or on a landing page rather, and it just makes it so much easier, because they say a picture is worth 1000 words, but then imagine that there are, I don’t know 30 different pictures in a second. And you count the number of words presented. I mean, so it’s that is the power of videos right? And, again, when you are on the landing page, again, it makes it easy for content communicating what could possibly take you a long time to communicate through text rather?

Karthick Sriraman: And again, we don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel there. Right. You look at b2c companies again, you have things like the sort of the loop videos autoplay. We haven’t quite seen that being incorporated in b2c effectively. There are platforms like LinkedIn that have started doing that to a certain extent. But what about like businesses themselves? Right, like, how do we learn from some of those things, and make sure that we can use some of the things that are working really well is to be seen.

Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. As you said, there’s so much to be learned from b2c for b2b. And then I think there’s a long way ahead. So you need interesting people to take charge of sales and marketing. I mean, as you said, not necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. But then there’s, there’s so much happening in front of you that you can learn from. That said, I want to understand more about the use of videos in account-based marketing. Now, account-based marketing, as far as I understand, the term might be new, but the premise is not right, if you focused on most key customers, and trying to focus all your attention on getting their attention or ensuring that you convert. So how do you think in today’s world, with, again, the whole idea of physical events going away? Or meetings going away? How do you think videos can help in account-based marketing?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, yeah, certainly. So I think in ABM, personalization is going to be key, right? You’re really specifically communicating something to solve for a specific pain. And that’s going to be important. But also beyond that, again, kind of trying to mimic the in-person world, some of the interactions you’d have there something you want to carry over as well. Things like, just Hallway Conversations, right, that you’re having a meeting and after that meeting, I’ve seen some colleagues do that quite well, is, you know, how do you take communications like that over to video and into the inbox is going to be key. And then end of the day, you want to kind of humanize that approach as well, you are a person, and the customer needs to feel that and can sort of feel your energy and feel your dedication to that engagement. And the best way to do that is video, you can’t just do that by typing emails, right. So again, you now actually have an abundance of those opportunities, even more so than you did before. So why not capitalize on it?

Pranav Chimulkar: True. True. You spoke about human addition. So, I would like to bring the flow, I was about to go to the next point that I had in mind, since you brought up humanization there are a few points that I would like to talk about inside of humanization. The first one being the use of jargon versus the use of natural language. What’s the take on that?

Karthick Sriraman: End of the day, you know, we’re all sort of in our rooms here, our bedrooms, or whatever we’re in, right? So why kind of take away that human aspect? Why don’t we just keep that very human and communicate how you would naturally communicate with your customers. So that could be different for everybody, you want that personality to come through. For me, for example, again, being in that room, using a whiteboard was a very effective tool for me. So for me now am trying to figure out, Okay, how do I then bring that over? There are tools out there like Miro, for example, that you can use to create that like whiteboard experience, and then take that into the video. And then again, kind of bringing your energy or personality to that and communicating that across is key

Pranav Chimulkar: True, the next big, like the use of storytelling, right? Oftentimes, in the b2b space, when we are looking at communicating, we were bound. I don’t know why. But then people are bound to talk about features more than talking about things that will evoke emotions in the person who’s watching. But how important is storytelling in this whole process?

Karthick Sriraman: Right. So the storytelling, end of the day needs to communicate the vision not for yourself or your company, but rather for them right. What is the objective they’re trying to reach? Like, what are the pains they’re trying to solve for and then personalizing video or whatever communication that is to really address that, is going to be key. And so like, and we’ve been doing this quite well in other formats, it just hasn’t carried over to video very well yet. But that is happening now. Where in even in the video communication, we are focusing more on what is the customer trying to solve for? Where are they at right now and where they’re trying to get to? And where they need to get to that and that sort of thing?

Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, I mean, I found a brilliant example, about this in just the previous episode of the podcast, we had Sandeep from Google, showing us an ad that Google has put out for their b2b apps. There are a bunch of apps developed for businesses in general. And it’s proof that you don’t have to be boring, right? When you want to communicate with a business on the other end. I mean, they are also humans on the other side, humans are suckers for stories. That’s what I see. And I mean, it is easier to get their attention, it’s very easy to communicate and bond over a particular topic. And then I think the sale becomes very easy once you’ve created that bond between you and your customer.

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, absolutely.

Pranav Chimulkar: So with that said, the next thing that I feel about humanizing. And not a lot of people do this, or other brands are transparent and authentic. I mean, I’m also talking about showing your flaws at time. A lot of times, they just want to show the good side. But then, I mean, everybody knows that there’s a person on the other side. And they are bound to make mistakes. So why it is important to be authentic and transparent about everything.

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, end of the day, whether, you are trying to kind of keep that away from you or not, customers care about that. They want to know, where you’ve fallen short, where you haven’t. And, again, the video has been considered purely just as this positive, shiny thing that you can put out. But now, it’ll be interesting to see some of the applications where it also shows, vendors or customers or projects or whatever you’re working on, in the negative sense as well, and or just the learnings that you’ve gotten out of it. That’d be very interesting. See, I personally haven’t seen a lot of those. But it is a pretty interesting concept. And I’d be keen to see some of them.

Pranav Chimulkar: Right. Because I mean, if you look at this, the most famous one. Everybody watches soap right, some of the best TV shows. And what actually, do people want to watch after they finish watching it? Is bloopers, right? Okay, what went wrong? Did they miss a dialogue? Or do they laugh in the middle of a scene? And these are things that you connect to and then you’d like to watch them on repeat. I think you can consume hours and hours of that footage and not get rid of it. So why don’t you do the same with your business, right?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think what it all comes down to is this continuously reinventing things like video, right? The reason this reality television everything is successful is because it didn’t exist before. And then somebody came up with it. And then there are things that are changing that as well. So I think the bigger point here is to just continue reinventing the engagement that you’re having with the customer.

Pranav Chimulkar: It boils down to the kind of person you are, right, you have to be comfortable putting your vulnerable self out there because I have a problem. A public consumer video format that I recollect when we are having this conversation is a section called ‘mean tweets’ on late-night shows. Even the President of the United States back then, I’m talking about Barack Obama, not the outgoing president, but he has done a few of these sessions where he reads out mean tweets about himself, but it’s very easy for us. President Kennedy, I want to put these away and hide these from the public image of mine. I don’t associate with this, but then you know, that makes that person more natural. And you’re bound to connect more when you see the vulnerable side of that. Right?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah. And also, you know, talking about reinventing, like what you guys are doing in terms of changing video into a podcast format, and sort of how you drive interest from that. Like, that’s all excellent. Right? Like, that is something that hasn’t been done before or hasn’t been done a lot. And you guys are doing it really well. So yeah, props to you.

Pranav Chimulkar: Thank you. Thank you so much. The absolute obvious point that I really want to bring out here is putting real faces, right. I mean, we all know that. We want to understand what happens behind the scenes, who are the people who built the product, right? What are the stories? Why? What was the reason why they built it? Right? And also, I want to see social proof, I want to see people who have used the product, and then and only then will I be able to trust you in the offline world. I will take an example. If there is a product that you walk into, say a target, and want to buy, but there’s a new product there you’d like to see what’s it about. And then you’d like to see if there’s somebody else out there who’s buying the same or who’s possibly used it, and you’d go buy recommendations, right? It’s in our blood to sort of trust other people who’ve had that experience or have used that product. So might not in b2b. Also, it is very important to show real people, whether it is the people who built it, or whether people who have experienced that.

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah. And I think that’s the key point to which is it needn’t be one way, right? Like, how do you bring customers into the fold? I think there’s a lesson of that being done, where the conversation over video is still very one way in that sense. But it’ll be interesting to see what comes there where also customers who can participate in return in the same format. And what does that evolve into.

Pranav Chimulkar: Right. So, I think a bunch of brands, are doing long-form case studies, right? In-text, we write white papers and things like that. And when it comes to testimonials, they put short, couple of lines that they go out to customers and say, What are the things that you like about the product, and then I happen to put out those couple of lines on the homepage, beneath on the third or fourth floor. But how important is it to not just talk about the nice things that these guys say about your product, right, but also showing the entire story from end to end? That your customer has a certain problem, which is a problem that a lot of others might be having? And would connect to? And then how did your product come and fix that for them? And what was the outcomes that came out of it, it is so much more powerful than just a testimonial. So I mean, we’ve done a few of those at guch. We’ve had a few brands create those video case studies, which give an end to end picture, of what really needs to be communicated.

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, and you’re right, you know, testimonials today are pretty repetitive, you see a testimonial on one side than the other, you can barely distinguish them. And it’s there to create a bit of a proof point, right? You do want that to a certain degree. But how can you then double click into that? And there are some very good examples of this where a customer can talk about the solution that you worked with them previously, maybe on a stage but now in a different format in a webinar or something like that. And then how can that be then converted into video again, and how can you use that? These are all key things that we should all be thinking about and incorporating. On the other hand testimonials again, as long as they can clearly articulate the value that you brought to the table for them. I think those are still important as well. But again, yeah, having that long-form, it could also be great.

Pranav Chimulkar: Really want to talk about is, sourcing your communication from your audience, right? I’m talking about the best form of copy that sometimes I’ve seen, is taken from customer reviews, right? When it comes to, like because when we, as people who represent the product, it’s bound to happen that we were going to sugarcoat things and, and use words that might not connect well with the audience, but rather, what is a brand, right? It’s a perception that other people have about your product and not what you present outside, because oftentimes they’re not eventually, the image that is there in the customer’s mind is going to dump your image.

Karthick Sriraman: Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Again, it’s not even just like, one format, I think generally getting customers in the fold, is something I almost feel is going to be a phase two of where the video is heading, in terms of sales, communication, etc. It is still, to be honest, very one way and I think we are going to start seeing that, but it’s not there yet. But we’re going to start seeing a lot more where customers can also, in turn, get value from communicating with us in the same format. And that generates content, right? Can you imagine the amount of content we’re creating this year because of this, it’s incredible. Everybody’s creating content on video, and then hopefully, we’ll see customers getting the value from doing the same. And that can open up so many doors. It’s definitely something that I’m going to be trying to kind of get more of that engagement from customers. But yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it.

Pranav Chimulkar: All right. So I want to talk about the next thing here. And this is a very important part of being in sales, right? Sending out proposals, say you sent a PDF, you send maybe a document that is maybe 10-15, page long, stating different parts of your proposition, your solution, and then comes the pricing. And there’s so much content there. And because on the other side, there is a person who’s receiving multiple proposals from multiple vendors’ sites. I think, for ad segment your customer data, if you’re talking about, say even one part of it, we just say CRM. And if a new company or a potential customer is looking out to purchase a CRM solution, and they’re in talks with different providers, solution providers, he or she might be getting anywhere around 10 or 15, or maybe even 20 proposals, because there’s so many out there. How do you ensure that you’re able to increase your win rate? And how does video help you solve that? I mean, let’s talk about the old approach. And then how can video come in and, like help you explain your proposal better and help you increase your win rates?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, yeah. So we’ve all gone through this, right, where we send out the proposal, and then something’s not clear. And then there are questions back and forth. Sometimes you try and get a meeting and kind of present and walk through it. But oftentimes, you may not get that opportunity. And again, coming to my point, but now you actually have that opportunity, because sending a video, explaining that is not something that’s going to be extremely foreign for customers right there. They’re going to be open to receiving these. So it’s a very powerful tool. These are things again, how do you mimic your previous in-person interactions? This is a perfect example of that. You should definitely be doing that. And in fact, one of my colleagues recently opened my eyes to even specific RFI responses or RFP responses. How do you use video to give some videos and what not to communicate your responses, not just in Excel, but actually through video and really stand out, that’s a great use of it as well.

Pranav Chimulkar: As you said, I think the best part that actually I caught out from what you just mentioned, was reducing the whole back and forth, right? So many times, you can only say so much in the text, and then there’s bound to be questions. You cannot be clear. In, first of all, I mean, especially if you want, if you’re at the other end, you’re trying to differentiate between two different proposals. It’s very important. The second very good advantage that you have with videos is often doing these mini walkthroughs like demos, even in your proposal, right? Okay, when you are talking about a part of your solution, and you can also do a quick demo because, in a text proposal, you cannot do all that. Right? You can actually include a screenshot, like an image, maybe. But here is how it works. And then it changes the whole game, right?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s all about reducing bandwidth, right? Like, do you need to really open up the email and then read the full email and get your information? Or is there a quicker way? We went from there to like, audio, for example, right? Like, where the bandwidth to the information, and I think I listened to this in another podcast, like Elon Musk, where he’s talking about bandwidth, and how that’s continuing to reduce how we access information. And why not the same concept in b2b as well, why does somebody have to go through and read a full email? To get to the answers, you know, can they get it in audio? And they get it in the video? Or could they request this information even more quickly, via video, and receive that back? Like, those are all things, exciting things that may come about that, we’ll see. But yeah, again, it’s all about, reducing that sort of time to value and bandwidth and getting to that information as quickly as you can.

Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, absolutely. The other part that I will talk about in sales, again, which possibly you are also facing right now is training your team. Because cannot get in front of your entire team at once. Zoom has come in and any video conferencing tool today is able to give you that opportunity to, again, try and mimic the whole training session. At the same time, some webinars have come out. But I’ve also seen a lot of training videos being made in animation format, etc. Where there are a lot of times where you have to go out and do a few things, you cannot explain that in-text again. Or even while speaking, you have to show visuals. If it is about body language, it’s very important, these are things that can come out only through a video you cannot do that over a phone call or even in written form.

Karthick Sriraman: Hmm, yeah, onboarding, and just the management and things like that, is something that a lot of managers today are struggling with, to be honest, right? This kind of came about overnight and just change everything. And it is something a lot of even seasoned managers find very difficult to. And I think there’s a lot of solutions evolving in this space. Actually, if you kind of start looking at some of the things that are developing is to solve that problem, like, how do you come back to mimicking that office environment with your team? How can you quickly anecdotally, you know, what’s the version of anecdotal information-sharing now, we don’t have that, maybe slack is close to it, where people are passing messages. But what can be even better? We don’t know that yet. But that is something that definitely is pain and hopefully, somebody solves it really well. And I know there’s a lot of companies who are starting to focus on it. But yeah, it’s a key area that I feel more companies will start adopting as we move into the more remote world.

Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. The next important point for any sales professional, or rather account because you also being an account executive, I want to ask you this, the ability to upsell. You’ve already sold a project and you have to look at possibly cross-selling something else or even upselling the same thing with additional features, you might have been able to sell only a part of the solution that you’ve built. Again, there’s so much more than you can do in every deal. How do you think videos would help you push that limit and close, larger ticket size deals?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, I think it comes down to communicating how a customer has already realized the value with your product. And again, maybe the video format may help with that, or make that better. And then again, continue to focus on what additional value that you can bring to the table, what you can solve for. So I wouldn’t say a lot changed in that regard of good practices to begin with. But again, video can maybe help communicate that more effectively than trying to do that by email. But I think that’s the key. That’s the key.

Pranav Chimulkar: Okay. Oh, so Karthick, we all have faced this problem. You’ve had leads, you’ve pursued them for a while, and they go down? What is your go-to strategy when it comes to bringing them from death, right? And sort of like restarting a conversation? And it might be either video or generally, what do you do when it comes to restarting that conversation? I mean, because it’s very difficult, right? I mean, you cannot stop them from deserting in the world. Today, the Gen Z word for it is I think ghosting, right? This is something that they use on Twitter. So what do you do Karthik when you get ghosted by a client?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah, I mean, end of the day, every interaction is about creating value again, right, so if you’re gonna temp that it should be from the perspective of, what value you’re trying to create for them? Like, why should you have the privilege of somebody’s attention? Unless you are creating some value for them? If you’re not, then you’re not right, So focus on that first, focus on what value you’re going to bring to the table. And then worry about, like how to revive these conversations, because you’re not going to revive the conversation just because somebody is in a good mood. Sure, maybe once in a while. But really, you’re reviving a conversation, because you have something now to bring to the table that’s going to actually help this person, their company, and whatnot. And again, can you do that better with the video? Absolutely. Right. Like, those are things that again, I’m fairly new to, but excited about and things that I’m trying and act and seeing good results.

Pranav Chimulkar: I think it’s not a bad thing, that you’re new to the whole video ecosystem. Because I think what comes with it is curiosity. Right? you’re observant, you’re sort of absorbing more than people who think that, I’ve spent enough time it’s bound to happen. What do you think, is a unique use of video that you’ve noticed? And that really got your attention?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah. So I think some of the things I mentioned, I received some autoplay videos, which, again, I didn’t have to do a whole lot to immediately gain value from five seconds, 10 seconds. So I think that was very interesting, rather than again, opening up an email and kind of reading through and trying to understand and all of these things and other like that very quick time to value like I open up my email, and immediately there’s something that’s being communicated specifically to me. And, I’m already at the value at that point. So I thought, that’s really cool. And we’ll see more of that in terms of gifs and other things. And then, as I mentioned, like mimicking some of the real-life, conversations, things that you would otherwise do with a customer, like a coffee, those are things that we don’t necessarily think about, how did that look like? And then also things like not just proposals, but other things that you’re trying to communicate, how can you communicate that better in terms of responding to like RFIs using videos And basically like any such, product questions, any of that, if you can cooperate more and more of that, I think they’re all like, great things that I’ve seen.

Pranav Chimulkar: Make sense. I want to understand from your perspective, how’s the vision of the video been? Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen, like the earliest movies came out, and then later on television happened, you could see everything on yours. And now today, you can see things on your phone, different formats, different durations? I don’t know what is like, you have variables today that you can experience video. Where it is come from, and where is it now as well?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah. Yeah, there are some interesting things you’re seeing. And obviously, it’s working, where we’re all kind of going to back to back episodes on Netflix, going through like these loops on YouTube or Tik Tok, they’re all very effective. You know, end of the day, there’s the secret sauce of the, like, the length of the video, and then the relevant content, as well as, kind of making some of the decision for you in terms of what you’re gonna watch next, and not having to click through like, we’re already seeing that. And again, on the b2b side, we are seeing some platforms, pick up on some of those. But have companies themselves started really incorporating that not yet, and not a whole lot. But we will start seeing more of those soon, hopefully.

Pranav Chimulkar: Right. Now, with that, I also understand what are different developments that you see? I mean, more than the actual solution, what are problems that you foresee will get solved? What are the things that you see will get more efficient? Or what you’re hopeful for, in the future, with the advent of videos.

Karthick Sriraman: I think mainly for me, it’s to see that two-way communication that we talked about earlier. I don’t know what format or shape that’s going to take. But today, it is certainly one way. And it needn’t be. And customers can also find a lot of value with that. But we don’t know what that’s going to look like. But when we do, that’s something I’m very interested in, is. Again, you know, if you take sort of the b2b side, or just the business side of things out of the equation, we don’t communicate over email as much as we used to before. There’s a lot of WhatsApp, there’s like FaceTime, a lot of audio-video communication. And then you know, how do we see more of that on the b2b side? And how do we see customers also picking up on it? What is it going to look like when they start creating content when they start communicating that, that’ll be a very interesting thing?

Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. I think you’ve covered quite a lot of a variety of things in this episode. And I’m quite happy that you could make time for us to share all these insights. But I want to also, before we close this session, ask you one last question. And this is something that I personally enjoy doing is learning from others. Because there’s so much that people are doing around you and things that can inspire you to become better at what you do. Can you name a few people or things that really have inspired you to be better at your job? And, like, sort of pushing your limits?

Karthick Sriraman: Yeah. You know, there are obviously some specific people but when you think about it, it’s like four sorts of categories, I would say, right? Like one is, customers, like customers, just continue to challenge you and bring the best out of you. So customers are number one. And then secondly, it’s your team that you work with, right? Your immediate team, your extended team, your manager, your organization, all of that. Also, all the support that you get from them, the things you learn from them. Then the third one, actually is your family as well, right? Like a lot of things that people kind of forget about that, as part of that successful equation. But all the support that you’d get from your family is key as well. So yeah, I think those three or four, but probably missing one now that yeah, I think those three. Specifically people like maybe I’d like to call out some of my previous leaders who kind of like help me grow as Jordan Van Horn who is at Monte Carlo now and then Greg Stone, who’s at Source graph, some of these folks, your team and the people you surround with you, you sort of becoming an average of them in many ways, right? So it’s very key that you kind of have that backing. And it’s those folks, folks that I’ve worked with, basically,

Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, I swear by the last point that you made, that you are an average of the people that you hang out with. And that is true to also the kind of people I get to hang out with on the Mad Over Videos podcast. So thank you so much for joining us today making time out of your schedule and spending this time with us. I know it’s the holiday season, so it’s hard. But then I’m glad you could make time. And yeah, I’m really happy and thankful for that.

Karthick Sriraman: Likewise, yeah, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, anybody who’s joined today, thank you so much for your time as well.

Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. So with that, we come to the end of the episode and we’ll be back with one more episode very soon. Until then, see you guys.

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