Why I joined this vertical SaaS company, and why you should too.

Well, the cat is almost out of the bag now. It’s been a couple of months since I left Kula and I was enjoying some downtime, meeting friends, doing stand-up comedy, and writing fiction. But, I am back to the grind – FleetPanda.

I have known Pavan, the founder and CEO for some time now. Have always admired him and loved our conversation. However, I never could imagine myself selling software to petroleum distributors in North America. Gosh! I am in disbelief even when I am writing this.

However, Pavan needed some help with setting up some product and content marketing, and I joined this excellent team called FleetPanda, as a consultant. Now that I look back at it, it mainly was a trap! I fell in love with the transparency and supportiveness of the folks around and working with Pavan and the team gave me the conviction I needed to commit.

Here’s a bit about FleetPanda – Pavan started a company called FuelPanda, pre-covid. The company got hyperscale and closed a crazy ARR within a couple of years. The business, put simply, was on-demand fuel delivery to your vehicle. Doordash for fuel, if you may.

But COVID did its thing and the entire company came to a halt. Everyone was clueless. It was a matter of survival. Pavan started jotting down all things he could do to stay afloat, and that’s when the light bulb went off.

While building FuelPanda, he had to get his friends from the valley to build the operating system for a fuel dispatch business. With FuelPanda stranded on the ground, he figured that the B2B companies in the space would still be operating. And if he couldn’t find decent software in the first go, most probably, the B2B folks wouldn’t have one, too.

He got on a call with the biggest petroleum distributors in the USA, got them as design partners, rebuilt FuelPanda’s software into FleetPanda, and went on to sign a dozen more in that one year.

FuelPanda became FleetPanda. With almost the entire team intact. With hope, grit, and fire in the belly.

I have a founder who believes that I know more about marketing than him. I have a board of advisors and investors, whose podcasts and essays I have learned throughout my entire career. And I have colleagues who name the retro meeting “Kick back and keep chill”.

I feel blessed to encounter such great companies, one after the other.

I am always up for an interesting enough challenge, and FleetPanda surely is one.

It’s been a couple of months into the industry, and I already know the difference between LCR II meters and LCR IQ meters. I know why tank wagons are called bobtails. And I know why our AE needs to be great at Golf.

It is a different world. Almost 180 degrees from the one I am used to.

But it is interesting. It is fun, mostly because of the folks around me. And it is new.

The prospects really want your emails here. They thank you for the product updates, and they wish you back on the 4th of July emails you send them. Seems unreal, but I have those emails.

Customers work with you to design and fine-tune the next module or feature. 

And prospects say - thank you for building this on demos.

I have always believed that Marketing is more about People than channels, and FleetPanda and vertical SaaS have given it back to me.

I am building my team and I already have Mariam, Harini, and Jagrit with me on the journey. I will be opening up a bunch of roles in the future, and I would love to open up the intriguing world of vertical SaaS and petroleum distribution to you.

And even before those roles open up, you are welcome to drop a line at rohit@fleetpanda.com