Kritmatta is one of the latest businesses to join Next Stage Trajectory – a platform for ambitious founders. We caught up with one of its founders Kalpesh Baxi (pictured) to find out more about the business and how Next Stage is supporting him on his journey to achieve his life-changing goal.
Can you share more about your background?
My career has predominantly been in the staffing solutions sector, and I previously worked with the global outfit SThree. The business went from under 300 to over three thousand people, floated, went global and broke one billion dollars in turnover.
Following this, I spent a couple of years working for SaaS start-ups and I am also an angel investor and board advisor. My career has gravitated around recruitment, staffing and technology.
Why did you create your current business Kritmatta?
Along with my co-founders Duncan and Manjit, I saw the problem of ‘how do you help non technical users become became AI native without being a software developer that can code?’
Kritmatta solves this by allowing non technical teams in businesses to build agents with no coding required, allowing you to automate processes around sales, support, and operations with AI that integrates with your existing toolstack.
This isn’t a Lovable product or GPT wrapper; we’re creating our own proprietary technology that we can use to scale and grow.
This is going to be a real enabler for businesses?
In the UK circa seven per cent of the eligible workforce is classed as digitally illiterate. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data show us that there are £2.3m people that could contribute to the economy.
At Kritmatta we want AI to be an enabler and to do our bit to make sure that nobody gets left behind on the AI transformation journey
How did you become aware of Next Stage?
I was introduced to Next Stage by its UK based operating partner Daniella Goodwin after we had a conversation about what we were building and why. It made sense to talk as the USA is on our radar as a market and it’s the homemarket for Next Stage. I met Bill Weathersby who is the founder and he is a super impressive guy, who understood our vision for Kritmatta and how the Next Stage approach could help us.
What is the plan now with Next Stage?
Together with the Next Stage team we have a clear mandate to scale the business and get as many users on board as possible.
It’s not just about raising money but about shaping the product market fit and looking at the systems and processes that we need to put in place to achieve the results we want. We’re currently building the product for Bill and when it is ready to go, we’ll roll it out to the Next Stage portfolio of companies.
At some point on this journey, we’ll look to raise again when the time is right.
What has been your funding journey so far?
We bootstrapped the business for the first twelve months, and this was intentional because if you raise lots of money before finding product market fit, you’re often not as focused as you should be. Following this, we wanted to get a small raise to help with sales and marketing and in April this year we raised some cash through a UK based VC.
Our journey over the past few months has been intense, in February we launched the public MVP, in March we went paid, in April we raised and in May we broke 100 users.
What does it look like working with Bill and Daniella?
They have helped us to cyrstallise where we want to go and how we get there – and how this is broken down on a monthly, weekly and daily basis to achieve our goals. This means regular calls and meetings to keep things moving at pace. You also get access to a lot of accumulated wisdom through Next Stage, as you have other ambitious founders and partners who have been there and done it.
I’ve been impressed because what you get is completely honest and what they have said they will do to support our growth, has been delivered. Bill and Daniella will also introduce us to potential customers and help us enter the US market, when the time is right.
One final point is that there are a lot of accelerators that approached us about joining but we said no to them because they didn’t offer the comprehensive level of support and the vision to stick with us until exit.
We also looked at the stable of companies Next Stage is working with, and it was a no brainer.
Moving onto AI – can you share your views on the impact it is having?
It is moving so quickly, and AI is currently displacing some people and not creating jobs. If you look at major technological changes such as the mechanisation of farming and when we went from steam to electric trains, jobs were created at the same time.
AI is displacing people as it can perform work tasks, but the jobs haven’t come yet. I don’t believe the doomsday scenarios though that we’ll need universal income because there will be job opportunities that are created too. The question we all need to ask ourselves is not ‘should I be using AI but how do I use AI?’ Finally, the received wisdom that AI is replacing graduates is a good strapline at the moment, but you also need to look at the economy and policy and how that is impacting the jobs market too.