For any B2B organisation, the role of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Business Development Representatives (BDRs) is paramount. While SDRs reach out to new leads for outbound sales, BDRs are essential for growth as they find lucrative ventures for a business.
Like all industries, the job of sales professionals in business development too has been transformed by the advent of the AI age. A McKinsey Global Survey found that among organisations regularly using generative AI in at least one business function, the biggest increase was seen in marketing and sales departments.
Childhood friends Ashutosh Singh, Neeraj Gupta, and Pankaj Gupta saw an opportunity to address the numerous challenges BDRs face, including burnout, inconsistency, and scalability issues, using AI. In 2024, they founded RevRag.ai and developed an AI-powered assistant to streamline repetitive tasks for sales teams, allowing them to concentrate on high-value activities.
“After building multiple SaaS products, we noticed that founders and revenue teams still struggle with securing demos, qualifying leads, scaling their sales processes, and more—despite the availability of numerous tools. Many teams are unable to fully automate repetitive tasks and leverage technology to its fullest potential. With the rise of GenAI, we realised it was time to rethink how revenue teams operate,” explains Singh, Co founder and CEO.
Capitalising on his experience at 6sense and Slintel, Singh, along with Neeraj Gupta and Pankaj Gupta, developed and launched Emma, an AI agent designed to fully automate sales processes and scale outreach efforts. The startup claims the AI can achieve 10X more demo meetings at 96% less cost.
“We are not building an AI BDR to replace human sales teams but to empower them. This technology will handle routine tasks and initial outreach, allowing human BDRs to focus on high-value activities that require emotional intelligence and complex problem-solving,” explains Singh in an interaction with YourStory.
“Our AI-driven SDR/BDR can handle initial prospect outreach and meeting scheduling, freeing up human BDRs to focus on meaningful client interactions,” adds Co-founder and CPO Neeraj Gupta.
What does Emma do?
Emma prospects and writes bespoke hyper-personalised emails to book meetings for sales representatives. The AI agent has two modes: autopilot, which is fully automated, and copilot, where users can review emails/content and approve it before Emma sends them out.
It scours through multiple sources like Apollo, LinkedIn, ContactOut, and BuiltWith to obtain account data, people data, technographics, buying intent data, psychographics data, funding information etc to write personalised emails. RevRag.ai works with over 10 data partners to source information.
Emma’s prediction model lists high-intent accounts (companies) and assigns them a score based on the type of company, product, and customer profile. Based on the score, the AI agent decides whom to pitch on priority.
Singh explains that while a human SDR/BDR takes about 30-50 minutes on lead research, Emma takes only three seconds to get all the context about the company from portals like LinkedIn as well as company websites.
Business model and traction
Singh said that the product was built within two months and since August, the startup has been piloting it with multiple B2B startups including Segwise, Bindbee, GenscaleAI, FutureAGI, DevDymanics, and Fretron.
These brands—in total 20—were onboarded under a startup programme.
“In the startup programme, we provide startups with everything but at a slightly discounted price so that they are able to realise the value of the product. Once they understand the product, then they can pay the actual price,” says Singh.
RevRag.ai is adding 5-6 design partners/pilots every day, who are paying customers but work with the company to initially shape the product.
The company’s target audience is mid-market companies and big enterprises.
Currently based out of Bengaluru, the company will move its base to Delaware, US shortly. It has a team of eight members and around 20 consultants. Going forward, the sales team will operate from the US and the tech team will be working from its Bengaluru office.
Funding and way ahead
In August, the company raised $600,000 in a pre-seed round led by Powerhouse Ventures, along with participation from notable investors including Viral Bajaria( Co-founder 6sense), CRED Founder Kunal Shah, Deepak Anchala (Founder, Slintel), Vetri Vellore (Founder, Rhythms), and other angel investors.
“We will start raising another round from October to improve the product and add more features,” Singh notes. The startup is also building more AI agents.
While there are no Indian players, the startup competes with international players like 11x in the UK,
AISDR in Ukraine, and Artisan from the US.
