Opening Builder.ai's Bangalore and Mumbai Offices from Scratch
Relocated to Bangalore to set up the company's first regional office, then extended the model to Mumbai within a year.
Shivam Singh
Senior Account Executive at DigitalOcean
From their time as
Regional Sales Head - India (West & South)
Builder.ai • 2019 - 2020
Overview
After two and a half years as an individual contributor at Builder.ai, Shivam identified that a large share of the company's business was coming from Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, where the company had no physical presence. He pitched the CRO on opening a satellite office, the idea went to the board, and he was asked to move to Bangalore and build it himself.
The Story
After two and a half years as an individual contributor at Builder.ai, Shivam identified that a large share of the company's business was coming from Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, where the company had no physical presence. He pitched the CRO on opening a satellite office, the idea went to the board, and he was asked to move to Bangalore and build it himself.
He sourced office space, hired a team of BDRs, account managers, a solutions architect, and a customer success manager. He deliberately hired for local language capability, recognizing that Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam fluency accelerated trust-building with customers across South India. He replicated the sales strategy from the Gurgaon headquarters and adapted it for the local market, covering Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kerala.
Within six months, the office was generating revenue and the team had grown to 15 people. He was then asked to open a Mumbai office as well, becoming Regional Sales Head for South and West India with a combined team of 20 across both cities. He traveled between Mumbai and Bangalore as his primary hubs.
The expansion directly contributed to the company's ability to serve customers in those markets and laid the foundation for the national India operation he later led.