Listen: Empathy towards customers will help startups re-engineer products to market demands -- Ganapathy Venugopal, Axilor Ventures

Since March, startups in almost every sector have seen a drastic fall in revenues as the Covid-19 pandemic hit the global economy. From laying off employees en masse to adjusting product and service lines to shifting market needs, companies have tailored their responses to cut down losses.

In the latest episode of the CapitalCall podcast, TechCircle spoke with Ganapathy Venugopal, co-founder and CEO of Axilor Ventures. 

Venugopal says Axilor was pleasantly surprised by entrepreneurs' readiness to weather such a crisis while ensuring business continuity.

The Bengaluru-based accelerator and seed fund was founded in 2014 by Infosys founders Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal and Srinath Batni among others. In 2018, they institutionalised the investment model through an AIF fund of Rs 200 crore. The organisation has supported more than 120 startups and its seed cheques are in the range of Rs 1 crore to Rs 3 crore.

Entrepreneurs who manage to acquire customers during this period have a higher chance of retaining these customers even after the crisis is over. Such customer loyalty can be achieved by having empathy to understand the customer and market requirement and re-engineering one's product, Venugopal said.