Business in:Brief with Vaibhav Namburi (Cenario)
Vaibhav Namburi
Co-founder of Cenario – 2019-present
Vaibhav Namburi is the co-founder of Cenario, a new financial planning software that uses intelligent AI models to provide advanced real-time analytics on a business's forecasting and budgeting, in a simple way. Vaibhav is also the founder and CEO of tech agency, Five2One.
Find out more about Vaibhav, his achievements in business, and what he's learned along the way.
What was your first job?
I was selling tyres for the Michelin man back in 2014.
What's your proudest achievement?
My company, Five2One built an application for the United Nations that helps schools get food on time so children can be fed.
What's something that you have learned in business that took you by surprise?
Narrative is everything. If you can narrate a story, you can convince anyone to leave your competition and work with you. I initially would position my business around what we were about and what we could deliver, but this never worked out too well. However, things blew up when I changed that narrative to what we can do for the customer, what value they get from working with us or the products we've built.
The other thing I've also learned is that people buy based on perception. Branding is something I'm learning every day, and every day I realise the importance of brand equity. People buy stories and whoever can tell the better story wins.
How do you plan on growing your business in the near future?
Our product is based on value proposition through product innovation. We're doing a lot of cool things to bootstrap our product. We've seen spikes in usage recently and I can summarise that to finding very high friction points for customers and solving them in the cheapest way possible for them.
What other business leader do you most admire and why?
There are so many, but I'll be cliche and say Elon Musk. Not because of what most people admire him for, but for the ridiculous hardship he's gone through in life outside of business and the fact he persists to change the world.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
The easiest way to make money is by making other people money.
What advice would you pass on to someone starting out in your area?
Talk to your customer, obsess about your customer, and make sure you know who your ideal customer is. Don't end up building things for people who you never intended to solve problems for.
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