The following interview is a conversation we had with Jithendra Palasagaram, CEO and Founder of Part Analytics, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $4 Million Raised to Simplify Direct Material Sourcing.

Jithendra Palasagaram
Hey, Brett, good afternoon. Thanks for having me. 

Brett
No problem at all. And I was joking there in the pre interview that I’m struggling to say your last name. So just for those listening in, could you go ahead and say your first name and last name pronounced correctly so they know who exactly we’re speaking to here? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Sure. Yeah, it’s Jitendra Palace. Sagarum. 

Brett
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining. Really excited to kick things off. Can we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Sure, yeah. As I mentioned, I’m Founder and CEO for Part Analytics. We are a B2B SaaS platform that helps sourcing and procurement leaders make fast and smart decisions throughout the product lifecycle. And we predominantly help manufacturing companies that have a significant electronic spend. And a little bit about my background prior to starting partnerings, I worked in a large multinational corporation, both in engineering and sourcing functions. And that’s where I saw some of the challenges that sourcing leaders typically face in their day to day jobs. And I was doing my MB at University of Chicago at that time. So it’s an opportunity to actually go out and build something to address this challenge. And that’s when we came out and started Part Analytics. 

Brett
When it comes to books, are there any specific books that have had a major impact on you as a Founder? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yes, I’m not very particular one, but I read different books over time and saw the good ones that kind of helped me through early in the process. Or lean startup, several others like that. And also not just books. I listen to other podcasts and stuff. I consume content in different formats, and those helped me throughout my journey. 

Brett
And take us back to the early days of the company in 2019. What were those early conversations like? Either with colleagues, investors and friends, or maybe just conversations with yourself, as you were deciding what problem you wanted to really solve. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yeah, so that’s a great question. As mentioned earlier, I working at a large multinational corporation, pretty much doing the job of our prospective customers. So I was in their state managing electronics commodity, a large medical device manufacturer. And during that experience I saw some of the challenges where even though companies invested significant amount of dollars in different tools and technologies, like ERP systems, PLM systems, were spending a lot of time managing our data and collaborating with internal stakeholders or with our suppliers using spreadsheets and email. And that’s where we saw the opportunity to actually digitize this process, applying new technology, but also bringing in market data and other sorts of data to really provide this one platform for people like myself. Back in my previous role, and early on it was given without background, working in the space, we really understood the problem. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
But the challenge for us was actually going out and initially raising funding. Right. We were based in the midwest, we’re not based in coastal region. So really kind of finding the right fit from investor standpoint and making sure they understood what we are going after. It took some time, but were very fortunate and happy that we found the right partner wisdom that believed in what were doing and invested in us early on when were still kind of in the transient phase of lean corporate jobs and coming out of the venture full time. 

Brett
And just to visualize what the platform does, can you maybe talk us through a case study? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Sure, we have several, but let’s pick fortune finder manufacturing company. And we recently did a case study with manufacturing company Isni Toolworks or ITW. If you think about ITW, they are a fortune finder manufacturing company that have multiple business units or segments. And there’s a sourcing commodity management team that’s tasked with driving cost reduction in the materials that they buy, ensuring supply continuity, right. Making sure the parts that are used in their products show up to their factories on time. Those are two high level priorities, but the challenge for them is they don’t have any visibility to the component or part level that they procure. Most of the, sometimes the manufacturing, there’s a combination of in house manufacturing, but also outsource manufacturing. So they lose that visibility at the part level. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
And the only way they get that information today is through spreadsheets and sending emails to suppliers. So what our platform was able to do is pull in this data from the spread sources, whether it’s their internal systems or from their suppliers, from spreadsheets, and create a single platform where they can go in and see their entire spend for electronic parts or components and get insights on how they can drive cost reduction by identifying parts like same parts that they may be procuring but paying different prices by identifying alternate source of supply that can give them better cost and also supply risk mitigation, which is a huge issue for them. As some of the listeners might know, over the last 18 to 24 months, there was a huge shortage of electronic components in the market and everyone was chasing for parts. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
So our software was able to help their buyers and purchasing team address or mitigate those shortages by giving them daily updates on new inventory in the market. Instead of the buyers searching for one part at a time going to different distributor websites, our software was able to aggregate all of that, send them a daily alert, so if their part shows up at a distributor, they get immediate alert on that so they can go and secure the part. So that was a huge benefit for them. Overall, for a customer like ITW, were able to deliver 5% cost reduction their spend, reduce their shortages by more than 70%, and help the sourcing team consolidate all of their spend one platform, get visibility to their spend so they can better negotiate and leverage their scale. 

Brett
This show is brought to you by. 

Brett
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Brett
When it comes to growth, are there any numbers that you can share that highlight some of the traction you’re seeing? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Not any specific numbers, but in terms of over the last couple of years, after we release our product, we work closely with some of our early customers. So we have two main segments as our customers. Typically these are called oems or product oems, original equipment manufacturers, and then contract manufacturer EMS companies. So we serve both segments the market, and we’ve been fortunate to actually add several Fortune 500 companies as customers, as well as some medium sized companies as well. 

Brett
When it comes to market category, how do you think about your market category? Is this supply chain management? Is it oem sourcing, EMS strategic sourcing? I see those categories listed on the site. So what is that primary category that you’re part of? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yeah, it’s kind of the way to think about if you think about traditional sourcing or supply chain management software. The traditional way of thinking about this is procure to pay systems or p to p, or if you take a step above that source to pay or s to p systems. But the way we think about this is actually a mindset of going early in the design phase or shift left right. Because for sourcing teams, supply chain teams, if they don’t get visibility and influence additions at the design phase, then it’s really hard for them to manage the supply chain. So the way we think about this, it’s a different category where we actually start all the way from design. So design is when engineers are selecting the parts to build their products. So we start right from there to sourcing to procure. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
So the way we think about is more like design to procure platform, which is different from a traditional source to procure or procure to pay platforms. We are actually going upstream in the process. Some of people mentioned about shift left right, going early in the design phase to really enable that collaboration between engineering and sourcing teams to pick the right parts from the right suppliers at the right cost. 

Brett
Got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And obviously just out in the world today, there’s a lot of noise. Sounds like you’re seeing a lot of growth. What’s working from a marketing perspective that’s allowing you to really cut through all that noise? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yeah, I think that’s a great point because nowadays, as you might, and the listeners might be familiar, everyone is getting a ton of email in their inbox, right. Companies trying to sell different things. And what’s been really working well for us is our customer testimonials and customer referrals. Our customers that use a product really love it and they really see value from it. And that’s kind of where they go and talk about our product to people that they know. And we are getting referrals from that. So that’s been a huge benefit or traction channel for us. And the other piece is also sharing in terms of we come from the background in the domain space, right. So me and the Co-Founder Jessel, we both have experience in the space. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
So just sharing in terms of our knowledge, our experience in the space with our audience is a great way for us to kind of get in front of the right decision makers. 

Brett
And as I mentioned there, you’ve raised $4 million to date. What’s the number one lesson? Or what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned about fundraising so far? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yeah, so we have raised 4 million over a couple of rounds. Right. The first lesson I would say is you never know where your first check might come from. And I have a great story around this. When we are first trying to raise funds, we both were still doing our full time jobs, running a startup and meeting prospective investors, talking about what we are trying to solve and our vision. And one of the investors that we, as part of a demo day from accelerator program were pitching and we got connected to an investor, and that investor, they were still trying to raise money. They didn’t have money to invest, but they connected us with someone they knew that actually was actually investing. That’s how we got connected and eventually got a check from them. So you never know. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Go out there, meet people, network, and that’s first advice because you have to be very active when you’re early in this process. And then after that, be thoughtful about who you raise money from. Because it’s not just the check or money, it’s more about what value they bring to the table. Right? So having that in mind and picking the right call on investors that can bring you some introductions, whether it’s to customers or advisors that they can bring to the table is very important as you try to build and scale the company. 

Brett
Let’s imagine that you were starting the company again today from scratch, based on everything that you’ve learned so far, what would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to yourself? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
That’s a great question. Probably I would have done it even faster and sooner. So were in the space of early on doing a full time job and running the startup and working on the idea and things like that. So I would have actually done it sooner and faster because when you have something, you really need to go at it with full speed. And probably that I would change that in terms of how we approached it. 

Brett
Final question for you here. Let’s zoom out three to five years from today, what’s that big picture vision that you’re building? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Yeah, our focus is probably on the electronics value chain, electronics supply chain, and really being this connective tissue and helping both product oems and contact manufacturing companies to collaborate and get the necessary insights to really innovate faster in terms of their product development. So executing on that vision, building out our platform, working closely with our customers, and being that market leader in this segment around electronics supply chain management. 

Brett
Amazing. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Love the vision. 

Brett
We are up on time here, so we’ll need to wrap before we do. If any founders listening in want to follow along with your journey as you build and execute on this vision where should they go? 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Great. Yeah. They can find more about us on our website, partanalytics.com. That’s partanalytics, partanlytics.com. Or they can follow us on LinkedIn. 

Brett
Amazing. Thank you so much for taking time to chat, talk about what you’re building, and share some of those lessons that you’ve learned along the way. Really enjoyed this conversation and appreciate you taking the time. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

Brett
No problem. Keep in touch. 

Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

Jithendra Palasagaram
You, our channel.