Saurav Pathak, Bagisto CPO Interview | Craft of Open Source Podcast

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I'm interested to talk to Saurav Pathak who has a super interesting project, Bagisto. Saurav, do you want to give us a bit of an introduction about yourself and what you are working on?

Thanks for having me here. I'm Saurav Pathak and I'm the Chief Product Officer of Bagisto. It's been a few years. We have been working on Bagisto and the project is going quite great. The best part is that Project Bagisto is bootstrap. It quite gives us a feeling that whatever we are doing and whatever the revenue, we are generating we are using it to grow by own. We have not yet further taken any external support from VCs. It's quite interesting to work on this project and continue going with it.

Tell us a little bit about the platform. It's an eCommerce system. Is it fair to say that it's similar to Magento in terms of what the problem it's trying to solve for people?

You got it right. It's mostly like Magento, only in which you can create your own online eCommerce platform. The only difference that we presented is that Bagisto is like Stack that Bagisto is completely built on Laravel. Apart from that, it's the people who are working behind it and the ethos that we are following with working with Bagisto. That's where we create our difference from other eCommerce platforms like how we are giving support, managing our communities, the venue model system, and everything

Where did the idea from this start? It's a fairly audacious thing to say, “I'm going to build an eCommerce platform.” That's an enormous amount of work to take on.

For that, we need to go back to 2018. There are two things that happened during that time. One is that our parent company Webkul was founded in 2010. It's one of the big eCommerce giants in the  Asia Pacific. They build and work on lot of open source eCommerce platforms like Magento, OpenCart, and so many others.

Working with all those platforms, we have gained lots of experience and we got to know the pros and cons of so many platforms. There was one difficulty that most other developers at that time used to face was the developers who were working on the frameworks that run on OOP’s concept or Object-Oriented Programming. They don't have go-to platforms where they can directly go and start working and building their eCommerce sites.

There were platforms which are like a piece tag, but they will now go to OOP's concept platform where they can directly go ahead and start making the platform. We have been getting a lot of feedback from the developer and merchant community that, “This is the issue we are facing and that's why we are approaching you guys to work on this platform and that platform.” That was the first thing we experienced during that time.

The second thing was Laravel. At that time, Laravel was going at its peak. Laravel is one of the most popular PHP web frameworks apart from Symfony, CodeIgniter, and CakePHP. However, Laravel has quite gained a lot of traction and it has got a very good community around the world. The thing that was missing at that time in Laravel was the absence of a proper eCommerce platform.

Anyone or any dev who was working on Laravel, if they have to build an eCommerce platform, they have to build it from scratch. There was no genuine eCommerce platform available on Laravel, but there are platforms available on Symfony and CakePHP but nothing on Laravel. These are two things that combined at that time when we thought of building an eCommerce platform but we end up scratching that and picking which technology we should use, and there comes Laravel.

This whole idea to provide a developer who works on an OOP concept can easily build an eCommerce platform and bridge the gap between the Laravel developer and the eCommerce ecosystem is what led to the formation of Bagisto. Bagisto has bridged a lot of gaps between the developer community and Laravel. For Laravel, it has become the go-to eCommerce platform for every developer.

Talking about Laravel a little bit. I'm not hugely expert in the PHP world. Laravel is a full-stack framework similar to Rails. Is that fair to say?

It's most like Symfony and CakePHP. You can build complex web applications using Laravel. I would say it’s like Vue.js but Vue.js is more on the frontend side. Laravel is mostly used for the backend works and building applications.

How did Laravel get so large so quickly? It seems to suddenly be the dominant framework for that language. What was that down to do you think?

The best part was that it used to use the Laravel framework compared to the other platforms available at that time. CakePHP was quite popular. Symfony started the PHP thing. There was CodeIgniter. Laravel brought things that can ease the work of the developer. There are so many in-built things that you can use in Laravel instead of doing the entire code. That put the hint in the developer's mind that this is like, “If I want to build a complex architecture system, I can easily use the built-in thing that’s in Laravel and I can build those systems. I don't need to go back to other languages and study that thing. If I have knowledge of OOP’s concept, I can directly go ahead and work in Laravel.

For any developer, the average time to learn Laravel and start programming is very small compared to other developers around the world. This is how people got into Laravel and that is how communities start building up. The big advantage for us being in India is that Laravel has got a very great community in the South Asian continent and that pushed Bagisto as well in order to adopt Bagisto and also to customize Bagisto for developers who are living in the South Asian continent.

It seems that there is so much going on trying to bootstrap a project that's that large. Did you have a business model in your head when you started or was it like you wanted to put some open source code down? What were your thoughts when you were starting out? Did you have an end goal in mind?

Not exactly. We had a revenue model when we started. The very first thing that we focused on was to provide a system to a community that they can use. They can adapt very easily and build their eCommerce platform. The first thing which we are focused on is to ease the work of the developer community and the merchant community.

Any merchant would have an eCommerce and don't need to go here and there. They can simply use our platforms and start building their eCommerce. Even if any merchant wants to customize the platform, they can use our platform. They can get that job done by developers and because there are so many Laravel developers who are around the world, it becomes quite easy for the merchant to get a Laravel developer and start working on Bagisto. As to the abundance of developers, merchants won't have to feel any hassle in order to develop their platforms on Bagisto.

The very first thing we had in our mind was to provide this solution to our developer and the merchant community. The second was to maintain good and reliable support. This second point is something that you can say is the core of the entire success story of Bagisto even until now. I think of all the frameworks the support system that we apply from the start and make the developer feel that, “If you have any issue in Bagisto, we are there for you, any moment, anytime 24/7.”

The one thing I would say was the crux of the entire story and these other two main things that we focused on quite a lot in the very first year. However, after the first year when we saw that things are going well and people were adopting and using it, we started getting so many recommendations and customizations a lot from the different merchants.

Usually, at the start, we were not doing that but as we saw that there are so many developers who are adopting it, even on sites like Freelancer and Upwork, there are so many job postings started happening that we need developers on Bagisto. There we start our body shopping services. We started giving the option that, “If you have work, you can hire our developer, or even if you need any customization, you can request for the customization.”

With that, we started building our team who were providing services of body shopping. From the very start until now, we have had a core committee or community of Bagisto which is totally focused on providing the Bagisto architecture like adding new features and doing R&D work, and then we have a separate team who takes care of the services. That happened after the first year when we started getting so many queries. We decided to provide these services to our merchants and developer community.

You talked about bootstrapping. How did you go about dealing with all those support requests? Were you making money at this point or not?

Not exactly. At the very start, a few months ago, it was nothing. Initially, we got a few merchants who told us, “I'm looking for some dedicated support. I have built this eCommerce on Bagisto and I need some support from a developer.” They need to understand things. At that time, we started giving dedicated support to some of our merchants. We told them that you can purchase some support hours.

For support hours, we are going to provide you with some consultancy. How you can customize the code, and how you can build payment and shipping gateways. After 5 to 6 months, we started giving dedicated support to the merchant. From there on, you can say that with support and with customizations then there we have the point. We have got a basic revenue model that we can give our developers for hire. We can give dedicated support to merchants and we can offer the services of customizations with that revenue model.

Is that the only way that you are generating revenue or are there other revenue parts you have as well?

Not a lot because in the open source ecosystem, most people follow. You can see the same revenue-based model that comes with Red Hat. Red Hat brings the licensing system. You build something, you license it, and you charge the license fee for that. Bagisto is free. There's no license for that, but we started building plugins and extensions and we started offering licenses for that.

There are many small plugins we have made on the Bagisto store. If you go, there are more than 100 plus plugins. Our thought was that if a merchant is building his eCommerce side on Bagisto, so whatever needs he has in terms of eCommerce, he will get everything on Bagisto. With that purpose, we started building small store plugins like marketplaces if you want to build a marketplace or connector with Amazon and eBay. You want to make a SaaS. You want to make mobile apps. You want to build a point of sale. We started making all those small plugins and started offering licenses for those plugins. That was the one part.

The second part, as I told you, was the support. We are offering dedicated support. People come, they purchase some support hours, and we offer our consultancy on that. Third was body shopping services where if you have any particular list of customizations, you can give it to us. Based on our judgment, we will tell you the timelines and quotation and we can work for you. These are the 2 or 3 things that we have followed until now as the basic revenue model.

The fourth thing that we are looking to start with is a partnership. Initially, we started that thing but we are not following that right now. A partnership is something in a very different area of Bagisto. We are not very focused on paid partnerships. Instead, we are very much focused on increasing our community. What we have in our mind for partnership is that if you are a company, you work on Bagisto. If you have made something like 50-plus websites on Bagisto or have been customized, or even you have made plugins on Bagisto, it means that you have a knowledge of how things work on Bagisto.

In that way, we offer you a partnership in that you can build plugins. You can list your plugins for free on the Bagisto marketplace. We won't charge any commission from you for listing the plugin. We are going to help you in selling your commission to our merchant community. If you have an extension, I list it for free. I get a merchant who is looking for a plugin that has been made for you. I will help you to sell those plugins to a merchant. For that sale, we are not going to charge any commission from you.

That is the one model of partnership which we started and we also follow until now. It's not we who are making plugins for Bagisto. There are so many third-party customers who are making plugins for Bagisto. If you check out the Bagisto store, they are more than 100 extensions. More than 30% of extensions are made by our partners who are providing us with support services.

This also gave us an idea that if any merchant is coming from us from a definite area, from South America, Brazil, or anywhere. I have a partner who is from there. If they are looking for a company that can understand the language, they can easily communicate. We started talking with those merchants and offering those lead solutions and then they are working on those solutions. This is the partnership model which we are following until now. We are not taking any commission or any pricing for that, but the initial level of the revenue model that the first thing I discussed with you is only the revenue model that we have followed from the start and that we have followed until now also.

Can you talk a little bit about how the project grew from it? How many people were you when you started working on the platform and how have you scaled that?

There were around 3 or 4 people. I'm the one who's taking care of all the sales and marketing things like the project. The initial thing which we had in mind was to spread the project. Make it reach every developer in the Laravel community so they can check it out. As it's made on Laravel, it becomes quite easy for any Laravel developer to understand the entire code architecture of Bagisto because it's the same as Laravel.

The only thing that is different is the commerce part. Otherwise, it's totally the same. At the initial level, for the first 6 months or 1 year, our main goal was to provide support services so you can save. We created a Facebook group and forums. We offered support services on Slack and on LiveChat. These are some of the support models that we incorporated in the first year. You can say the work that we got was to develop features and provide support to our merchants and developers, and they can get acquainted with the project.

In the first year, they were only 3 or 4 people who were working on providing support services and building features. Once we find that there are so many queries coming up in Bagisto that people are looking for Bagisto developers. They are looking for services on Bagisto. From that moment, we started growing a team. We got a team who will take care of only the service part and then we have a team who will take care of only the code Bagisto part.

From there on, teams are growing on this particular thing, and even right now, whatever team size we have, we have segregation in that these people will be responsible for only doing the projects regarding the customer and these few people will take care of the core part of Bagisto, and then we have people who will take care of all the R&D part which are sponsored for Bagisto.

How big is the team now?

We started with 3 or 4. Right now, it's something around 35. The best thing is that it's not just a team. We have a very great community. We have around 5,000 plus members in the community combined on forums on Facebook. We even have ambassadors from different countries. At that time, we appointed ambassadors like the partner companies in different regions.

We have ambassadors in South America, Belgium, Cambodia, and the US. These ambassadors were responsible for providing the services for that particular reason. They’re legally bound with Bagisto but they are the ones who were providing services and we are promoting them. If you are in America or South America, you speak Latin or Portuguese and you are looking for a developer in that particular region, you can connect with this company.

Not only are they helping us with the services, but it's also with the different business models. People living in Europe might have a different policy from people living in Brazil. They have different laws and ecosystems. We do meetings with them. We discussed things that are required for the people living there and for the merchants.

For a merchant in Germany, what you need in terms of taxes and prices can vary from the merchants who are looking to provide services in Brazil and Argentina. The ambassadors that we have around the world are not just responsible for the services, but they are also responsible for providing us with feedback and also to get to know with business models that are working there. Collectively, we work in a group developing those features on Bagisto and also developing those plugins as well.

That's a nice way of getting around the problems of legal differences in countries and that effort of trying to set up a legal entity in those countries. You are avoiding that altogether. Is that right?

Yes. I'm in India and I don't do business in Europe. I don't have much idea. The people who are living and working there will have a much better idea than me. Instead of going there, learning things, and setting up the industry, it's better if we work as a community. As the entire people are working on Bagisto, we have got a great and helpful community. The community keeps organizing events and meetups as well in different locations. We are in touch with them.

In Bagisto, community means a lot to us. People do ask me a lot and I tell only one thing from Bagisto. The perspective is that for us as open source, take care of the community and the community will take care of you. That's the ethos that we are following for the last few years and even until now. It's not just the community. We are like a family. We talk regularly like once a week or a month. We are totally connected to everyone. There's nothing like a hierarchy established between the community in the core Bagisto team. Everyone is connected. Everyone gives feedback and suggestions and we discuss with them on call and then we build up things.

It's not like we building things randomly out of the box. Whenever we build things, we sometimes put out a poll on Facebook that, “We are going to develop these features. Which features are you looking for what you have?” or we have a call with the community about suggestions they have. We do a lot of things based on the recommendation and feedback on our community.

That helped us in order to penetrate that market area. We are building things that are required for that particular ecosystem. It's not randomly you are building anything that will get adopted by the people. Before building anything, we do consider the community. We have talks and then we started building those features.

How would you go about protecting yourself? Someone could start up, “How do you worry about those ambassadors going off and doing their own thing?” How do you deal with that problem?

I shouldn’t dare do anything. It's not like predicting it because Bagisto is an open source. If you want, you can clone it. You can customize it. You can sell it. That's like the worse cover ends up basic MIT license, and that's fine with us. We tell that Bagisto is covered in the MIT license. You can use Bagisto, you can customize it, and you can provide services to your customer.

We are telling them that it’s okay to can use it. The only thing that we have is the licensing system without plugins. We tell them, “If you purchase any plugin, you get one license with that.” You can install it in one instance. With Bagisto as a core Bagisto, it's free and available. It's open source. You can use and customize it. If you have any customers looking for customization, you can sell it as well. There are many people who are doing it. We are promoting it but we are encouraging people, “Use Bagisto if you get any eCommerce project. If you have a merchant, advise them of Bagisto, and you can start providing services on Bagisto to that particular merchant.”

In terms of the plugins and the components that aren't open, do you spend a lot of time worrying about keeping those secure or how do you manage that licensing aspect?

From a security perspective, we have our team who take care of the security of the framework, but in terms of licensing, it's pretty plain and simple that we give a key. If you purchase it, you get a key. With that key, you can make use of it. That is the one thing that we have in our system. The second thing is that we have found out that there are people who use plugins and sometimes they have put those plugins open source on GitHub repositories. We do scrap for that as well for our plugins if they haven't been made open source. We go on the repository and we put an issue there that, “This plugin is a license of this particular thing. You can't make it public, so please take it down or make it private or provide us with the order ID. Otherwise, it can be marked on GitHub. We can report it.”

They are people after consulting with them have done that. They give us the order ID that, “I purchased from you. I'm sorry. I will make it private right now.” That's the one thing that we scrap on GitHub get as well. We do have set Google alerts as well that if anyone uses Bagisto anywhere in the world, Google alerts are quite helpful in that.

They give us instant notification that this plugin is used here so we get the idea that it is being used and which customer is there. The other few things which we follow at the initial level right now is how to protect our licensing system or the plugin so we can make sure that people are using it on only one environment and using it on one instance only.

How do you go about deciding what is part of the core platform and what is an additional component?

It's pretty simple. On GitHub, we have this discussion section. People do come and put their enhancement there on GitHub on issues that we mark as an enhancement. If it's a small enhancement, that goes fine. If it's a big enhancement as we discussed with our community members, we put a poll on Facebook sometimes if it's a very big feature that they are going to download. Based on the feedback from our community and based upon the requirement analysis from our sales team about how many requirements you are getting for this particular feature from different merchants. Based on that analysis, we decide that this is the feature we should have or a feature that is going to come.

Like this error, we built the very first NFT marketplace model on Web3. Web3 has been going quite a lot. NFT came in the past few years. We part that. It will be a good chance for us to ride the wave. We started building the NFT marketplace model. We observed the community. We even discussed it with the community. We attended some events as well in Dubai and somewhere else. We went to the Web3 meetups as well and we saw the community growing up. These are some of the few smallest factors which we take into consideration before developing a feature or plugin for Bagisto.

In terms of community management and building that community, what things have worked for you and what haven't? What tools have you used? What approaches have you used to do that? It sounds like the project has been successful in that regard. You can't get a project like this off the ground without having a large group of people using it and implementing it.

At the initial level, we got this live chat support. We use a tool for providing or promoting live chat support. We built Facebook groups and forums on which the community can come together and put their issues and we will solve them and will help them. Next, we also have this ticket-based system where we told people that you have certain issues with the paid modules.

We can raise a ticket with the order IDs. We verified the order ID and we provide support on the ticketing system. Live chat tools, Facebook groups, forums, and ticketing systems are some of the tools that we use at the initial level. After that, we came on Slack and Discord. We made channels on there as well. People who are there on Slack, feel free to communicate on Slack or on Discord. We started providing support services even there.

There is a good number of channels we have for Bagisto by which our community can reach us. It's not very difficult to trace Bagisto people and ask them queries. We have opened all doors in all sections on how people can reach us. It's pretty plain and simple. These are the few things that we have at the initial level until now. The support part played a very crucial role and is playing even right now. These are the tools that we used by which we opened that door for the community, and community can easily reach us using these tools, and then we can provide support for them.

In terms of the pricing model for the plugins, is that a one-time thing or is it a license? How does that work?

It's a one-time thing. Whenever you purchase a plugin, you get a source score. It's a one-time fee. You get three months of free support and you get lifetime free updates. We keep updating our plugins whenever a new version comes up in Bagisto. Whenever a new version comes, that becomes a new feature and those features get incorporated into the plugins as well. Whoever has purchased a plugin for the first time will get those features for free.

This is the simplest thing we have made for plugins. It’s three-month support free and one-time payment, full source code, and lifetime free updates. That's why it was not very much tough for us to put the pricing on the plugins, and also for customers to come on with us and start using the plugins. We put very plain and simple pricing here.

In terms of marketing the project from when you started, how did you go about doing that? What was effective for you?

At the initial level, we targeted the Laravel community most precisely because it's a Laravel-based project. The Laravel community has already quite a big community. We know that once the Laravel community adopts Bagisto, it would not be hard for Bagisto to reach the other community of merchants and developers. That was the one idea that we have at the very start.

I will give you an example. I started with doing marketing on the Google rankings, Bagisto. I found some keywords and there was one keyword Laravel eCommerce which quite a lot of people used. Laravel eCommerce keyword on Reddit, Forums, Stack, or Workflow, on so many things. Initially, my first marketing stunt was to bring Bagisto to the top of Google rankings on Laravel eCommerce keywords.

It did not happen in a few days. It took me something around one and a half year because the initial level of Bagisto is nowhere. From nowhere to the top position is got a great journey. Even now, if you search Laravel eCommerce keyword, Bagisto is either 1 or 2. That's happening even right now. That is the first marketing stunt that I did and I followed. The next marketing things were after that.

Organizing meetups on Laravel, promoting Bagisto there, then going to open source conferences and telling our success story after one year. We have been giving a lot of roll shows on Bagisto. We go companies to companies and give presentations on Bagisto. We approach the developer community and Laravel company on LinkedIn.

We suggested to them, “If you are looking to build a site on Laravel, you get an inquiry, you can use our solution.” It was more like a lot of organic marketing that we did. Even until now if you would say haven't get followed a bit of paid marketing like Google Ads. Until now, we are doing ordering marketing. Content plays an important role. Content marketing was one of the most important aspects of store marketing that we started from the start and we are going on until now. As you can see, there are many keywords on which our general content is ranking on top of the Google pages.

Was that content engineers or commerce site owners? To whom is it targeted?

Initially, I was the one writing content and then I had a few people. I encourage my developers to write content on a technical basis. We write a lot of content on the commerce side. You are having your commerce store, what is the next thing you can have? Omnichannel marketing, headless eCommerce systems, and CMS. There are a few other stuff surrounding all of these. We were adding content on commerce and combined it with a text chat. What's going to happen in commerce?

It means we are adding more content which is the future of which is going to happen in commerce. It’s like live streaming is the future, then virtual try-ons, augmented reality, and machine learning system on recommendations. Everything was combined around eCommerce but showing the things that this is going to be the future of commerce.

At the start, we were writing so many articles about how you can use Bagisto. We are making videos on that. How you can make plugins. How you can make a simple payment gateway. With few developers, we incorporated them on YouTube. We do get a session and those developers were putting videos on YouTube about how you can make this small plugin on Bagisto. These are the small marketing things that we did at the start and it helped a lot in order to get Bagisto on top of a lot of eCommerce keywords in 1.5 years like that.

Talk to me about Shopify. Shopify is a clearly big huge player in this space. How do you work with that? You've got different models of operation. How do you deal with that as a competitor?

Even at the start, we were not competing with anyone and even right now, we are not competing with anyone.

Do you feel like that because you've got such a different business model?

I won't say it's a business model because the business model that we have, you'll find pretty much that it’s simpler than every other open source platforms. They follow quite a lot of the same business models. It's more about the ethos and the culture that we follow with open source. I will give you example. A lot of open source projects don't care a lot about the community.

You go on GitHub. You log your error. This is the error on the GitHub repository. That error took months to solve and merge in the co-repository. There are so many enhancements there. There are so many issues under the repository that has been open for the past few years and have not yet been solved. That difference that we create that I told you is how we take care of the community people that we have.

We are not very much focused on the business model because it's pretty much plain and simple that every other open source follow. We follow a different approach to providing support services and taking care of our community. You talk about Shopify. There's no match between Shopify and Bagisto. I'm not talking in terms of how big Shopify is. I'm talking in terms of the business model.

They are a SaaS model. We are an open source model and also a great payer. I will tell you what we did. We built plugins and we told people, “You can go out into the market and create your own Shopify.” We build a multi-SaaS plugin by which people can build a SaaS platform or SaaS contact like Shopify on Bagisto. This is what we did.

You'll be surprised to hear that plugin is one of the most expensive plugins on the Bagisto store. It's like $1,199 and that is one of the highest-selling plugins that we have right now. When we launched that plugin in the second year, at that time, there are many SaaS players, Shopify, BigCommerce, EC World, and Virtual mar. There were so many, but there was no other platform that was giving you the power to create your own Shopify, and that's where Bagisto entered the market.

Until now, we have great hands-on experience in handling SaaS systems because we brought the plugin first in the market. We do have a lot of customers who are using those plugins and building their own SaaS systems. Give it five years’ time. You are going to see a lot of Shopify-like platforms built on Bagisto. That was what we did.

We are not competing with Shopify. It’s totally not the business model that we follow. However, respectfully, we do take inspiration from them. We do drive our inspiration from Shopify, Magento, and a lot of eCommerce, but it's not like we are competing with them. We are trying to be the best of Bagisto only, and we are trying to provide the best services that we can give to our merchants on Bagisto.

In terms of the metrics of what you are focused on, how do you track your success? What things do you look at?

There are a lot of parameters to analyze success. Every star on GitHub is a motivation for us. You can say it like that. It's been several years and it's something around more than 4,500 plus on GitHub, and it means a lot to us. Every star that comes on the depository means that there is a developer around the world who is using Bagisto.

There are other metrics like 60,000 and 70,000 plus installs. More than 300 plus reviews on our cross-file system. I think a bit on the revenue side, we are doing great. At least that great that we can take care of ourselves and the community. For us, it's not about generating $1 million in a year. It's all about staying for the next hundreds of years. That is one thing that we have. We don't want to go with generating those lot of money in one year. We want to get going. We want to be there as long as it is possible.

Is that one of the reasons why you've decided not to raise a chunk of money?

Yes. That's the one reason. First of all, there are not a lot of VCs funded open source projects. There are many projects which are in stock and there have been stories in the past few years. All the open source companies that are acquired by other companies, all VC has funded open supportive. That project ultimately went on after one year providing a SaaS business model.

It’s a change of ethos and culture of open source. That open source which started as an open source now is running a stock model. You have to. Otherwise, how you are going to show the balance to your investor? The investor needs to see that. The other few things that we have in mind are that we want to keep our ethos intact.

We tell people that Bagisto is free and will always be free forever. There won't be any SaaS model. There can be a past model like a platform as a service or infra as a service but not software as a service. There's no SaaS system we have in our minds. You can say that's the one reason also why we love growing bootstrap. We love talking to the community. In this perspective, until things are going fine, there's no doubt in our minds that we are going to approach VC or anyone to fund the open source for the Bagisto.

Before we finish this, is there anyone you want to mention or thank, members, or any events that have happened that you'd want to mention?

There are a lot of people. Bagisto runs from this community. It's not just us who are running it. The entire community is in Bagisto. I would like to give a special mention to Mr. Vipin Sahu who is the CEO and Cofounder of Webkul. He has got a great knowledge of forecasting eCommerce and what's going to come in the commerce market. We do take a lot of feedback from him whenever we build a plugin.

Next, I want to give a special thanks to Singh Jitendra, the CTO of Bagisto. He started the very first thing with Bagisto and he’s still working in the company. There are so many people who contributed at the start like Glenn, and then there are so many names. We have 5,000 plus community members. It's not possible for me to tell every name.

I would like to give special time to my community members for supporting us and for being with us. There are times when everything is not good. That's going to happen every time. The bootstrap model is certainly going to be difficult. There are times like 3 or 4 months without any revenue. There are times we get something. There are times we have got a major issue on Bagisto. There are so many ups and down, but I am fortunate to have a grateful community with us who are there with us for every moment.

Whenever our thing is there, they are ready to help. Initially, we used to think that it was our project and that we need to drive this project. Otherwise, who else will do it? My perspective has changed a lot right now. It's our community right now that is helping us to drive this project. We are being with them, walking with them, and they are the ones who are taking this project for them. That is what I would like to say. A huge thanks to our community and the people who’ve helped to start this project.

That's great to hear. I know exactly what you mean. It's sometimes surprising. You catch yourself and there are dozens of people using this project. It was an idea a few years ago. Saurav, thanks so much for your time. That's been super interesting. It’s an interesting business model. I want to thank you and wish you good luck in your future.

Thank you. It was nice speaking to you. It was nice to let the people know about the bootstrap journey of Bagisto. We started from zero until now and all these things. It's great. It was lovely speaking to you and thank you for your time.

Take care. Have a good day.