Anthony(00:00)
Today on the Revenue Acceleration Podcast, my special guest is Mehsum Sayani. Mehsum is the founder and CEO of a company called welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself and your company and tell us a little bit about what you guys do.
Mehsum Sayani (00:12)
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for having me. Really excited. So I'm Mehsum. I'm an ex-banker. And as you mentioned, I run a company called Propel Us. So us are the weak passport holders. Half of the population of the world comes from weak passports, and they need visas to travel, right?
And there are many manual processes, cumbersome processes that the weak passport holders have to go through to be able to get visas. So we are building an ecosystem, a platform. Think of us as the next Amazon for travel visas. We bring travelers, travel agents, governments, all onto the same platform for a visa in a few clicks. That's the vision. That's the dream.
Anthony (01:00)
Wow,
refreshing to hear a company is actually trying to solve that problem. that's really
tell me a little bit about your background and why you started Propellus. What gave you the motivation to get something like this up and running?
Mehsum Sayani (01:11)
Yeah, thanks, Anthony. There is always a story behind a founder and I have one as well. So as I mentioned, I've been an ex-banker, very happy with my banking job, very, very cushy salary, life settled in Singapore. Why the hell did I have to start something like this? That's the big question. So the story is that a few years ago,
me and my wife, by the way, my wife is a Singaporean Chinese and she has the strongest passport in the world. I am a Pakistani person, know, from Pakistani origin person. And I have one of the weakest passport. And, you know, so we have kids amongst our, you know, she had two kids, I had two kids, we got married and now we have four boys together. So we said, let's take the boys to a nice holiday. They're all teenagers, soccer fans.
Anthony (01:47)
for a h-
Mehsum Sayani (02:01)
So the best place to go is Manchester, show them a nice time, soccer match. So, you the holiday was booked and we realized that I, my, my youngest and I needed a visa. So I, a very meticulous person, did the whole visas, spent, I think a whole Sunday filling out visa forms diligently, you know, applying for visas, making the payment. And finally, you know, after a month, we actually get the visas.
And I look at the visas and I validate everything. Everything is great. The plan was that the youngest and my wife will go to Pakistan, spend some time with my parents, and the older boys will just meet us in London directly from Singapore. So on the day of the flight, me, my wife, my youngest, who was 10 at the time, we're on our way from Pakistan to Dubai and Dubai onwards to London. We're about to board the plane.
Anthony (02:41)
Okay.
Mehsum Sayani (02:53)
The guy looks at my wife's passport, says, go, looks at my visa and passport, okay. He looks at Anthony, my 10 year old son's visa and says, sir, there is a problem. And I'm like, what's the problem? He's like, sir, this boy can only travel with Sayani and passport number. I said, I'm Sayani, Mehsum Sayani. This is my passport number. He's like, no, sir, look closely. I said, no, no, no, I recognize my passport by heart.
The guy gets a magnifying glass and shows me a six was an eight under a magnifying glass. And I'm like, okay, you're right. Under a magnifying glass, clearly it's a mistake. Anthony, we were not allowed to travel. This was 2021 December, just after COVID. I begged, I pleaded, I made phone calls. Nothing, they would not budge.
Anthony (03:28)
no.
Well.
Yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (03:44)
They said, well, your wife can travel, you can travel, but the 10 year old boy cannot travel. We said, you know, there are two boys on a flight very soon, going to be on a flight from Singapore to Dubai and London. Where are they going to go, right? They didn't. After that, Anthony, I was a changed man. When I got back home eventually, I realized and I started asking, how is it possible?
Anthony (03:59)
Yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (04:08)
that in this day and age when we're trying to go to Mars, we have a Gentic AI in banking where I work, I can issue you a credit card or a loan in five minutes and yet we can't issue a visa in five minutes? We have to take so long? Why do they ask these visa forms? Why do they ask us? They have all this information, right? Why?
Anthony (04:26)
Yeah, seems silly.
Yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (04:34)
I started looking around in the world who's trying to solve this problem and I couldn't find anybody. So one day my wife asked me this, Mehsum, do you know how to solve this? And I said, you know what, I think I know how to solve it. And that was the start of the journey.
Anthony (04:49)
Wow, What a terrible story, but something, really cool coming out of it. So, I can't imagine how you guys felt sitting there in London and then not being able to do anything with your travel plans. Absolutely terrible. But anyway, yeah. So Propellus was born out of that drama and, you obviously then went away and started developing the software on how to solve this problem. So,
Tell us a little bit about that. How long did it take you to get like a beta version of it up? And then how have you got your first clients? What did you do there?
Mehsum Sayani (05:19)
Yeah. So a very good question. So I think when I, when I started, I was like, okay, you know, I, got a couple of, developers out of Pakistan where I was, I phoned a friend and I said, listen, I'm not a technology guy. I'm a business guy, but I need a couple of developers. have this idea in my head. I need to develop a prototype. It took me about four months to come up with a version of a, of a prototype.
And then I took that and I started showing it to some of my friends and family and some of travel agents. And everybody's like, you know what, Mehsum, this is a big pain problem. If you're able to crack it, people will pay for it. And I got a lot of encouragement and I'm like, all right, that's great. I have something. And then I launched as in I registered the company in Singapore. I put in a little bit of money of my own, got a bigger development team.
started building a better version of the prototype in the year 2023. building, breaking, building, breaking, it took me at least a year, year and a half to come up with the next version of the product. It was hard. It wasn't easy. And this is Anthony with my full-time job as a banker. I was doing this on the side in the evenings, on the weekends, iterating, building, failing, failing fast.
So that has been my sort of journey. And finally, last year in 2024, around the last quarter, we had a decent version of the product, which we took to market in the UK for weak passport holders with a couple of visas for Saudi and UAE visas. We did a soft launch. How we got our first customer was that one of my advisors,
had some relationships with a travel agent in the UK, Prince Visa. We actually started working with them. They believed in us and they said, know, we brought them on board as an advisor as well because nobody, I didn't have a visa sort of domain expertise. So I got him on board as an advisor. As we started building, they realized what we were building and they even invested into Propelis as well.
Anthony (07:04)
Mm-hmm.
nice.
Mehsum Sayani (07:24)
our investment investment campaign. And they were our first clients as well. And they even helped us get 15 more travel agents connected because they said, okay, we're using it. We're we think this is going to be beneficial. So from that point onwards, you know, the story started, we got our first few customers, we tested, and then we had more problems at which we will talk about that later. we'll answer your questions.
Anthony (07:48)
Yep.
Mehsum Sayani (07:50)
That's how we launched it, that's how we tested it, that's how we got our first customer.
Anthony (07:54)
Okay, great. So obviously it was well received with Prince Visa was the company, was it? Prince Visa? Well received by them. so what kind of success did they have with it initially? I know you're iterating fast and you're pumping out new versions as quickly as you can, but obviously it does work to a certain point. So tell us about the success they've had. Have they been able to chop the Visa processing time in half or is it better than that or what's the success?
that you've had with it.
Mehsum Sayani (08:22)
So Anthony, we had a little bit of success, but the vision that I have, which is fully automated, you know, visa in a few minutes, that wasn't there. We could see bits of it. And even with the bits of it that, you know, we could reduce some parts of the workload, the validation, the checking, the form filling, all of that was good, but we weren't there yet. But even people with that were excited about it.
And I realized that as I wanted to build more features, as I wanted to scale, I realized that the technology that we had built was not scalable. And that came the biggest challenge at that point in time. So at that point in time, I realized that this is not going to work. So I had to find a different CTO who could help me build the next scalable version of the product.
Because in the meanwhile, Anthony, what was happening was all this demand started building up with more and more travel agents coming. And at that point in time, I said, okay, if I need to build a scalable version, I need to get better people, I need to get more people, I need to start raising money. So I started raising money as well. And luckily we were able to raise more than half a million dollars last year to be able to support our journey. So that was great. And with that,
Anthony (09:35)
Nice.
Mehsum Sayani (09:37)
even more demand from online travel agencies in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, in Singapore, in corporate travel partners started coming up. We started doing MOUs. So the demand side was actually flourishing. But the supply, we weren't able to match because the platform was really shitty. I'll be very honest because it was just a prototype or a better version of a prototype or, you know,
Anthony (09:58)
Yeah, right.
Mehsum Sayani (10:04)
an MVP. I had to take a tough decision to stop that or pause that and build the scalable version. So currently we are in the process of building that scalable version. Hopefully in the next 60 to 90 days, we should have that ready. And then we will start onboarding those customers. In the meanwhile, what we've done is we are being selective now with doing partnerships.
with a few of those first so that we can build with them. Because we are able to see play right now, we want to make sure that we have the right partnerships who can, we can co-create this version of the platform. So it's not like we build it and somebody else uses it because that didn't work for us because when even with the first 15 customers, they were like, this is missing, that is missing.
We need this, we need that. Eventually everything will come, but we have to do it iteratively. This time, what we're doing is we're co-creating. It's like, okay, we need 100 things, but tell us what the first 10 things you need. Which are the first few visas that you need? Which are the first few features you need so that we co-create and they start using it and we can then start making revenue first and then iteratively build on top of it. That's been our new change in strategy that we're following.
Anthony (11:20)
Right, okay, cool. So kind of that point where you wanted to grow, you had to kind of slow down, kind of get this software all sorted, and then you can kind of go on an upward trajectory from there. you mentioned that you had to get a new CTO. So
through that challenge? Was there someone you knew, or did you have to kind of go out to the market and see who was out there that could take a hold of your project and get it done?
Mehsum Sayani (11:42)
Yeah, so I think I got lucky while I was in London for my GTM. A common friend of mine and the CTO, we were introduced and we had a good connection. We started talking and because I was there for two weeks and in fact, I was living very close to the CTO. So we were...
catching up on a regular basis. was talking to him about the challenges that I'm facing, the opportunities, the demand that is available. we decided that we can possibly help each other. And I said, OK, why don't we do a 90-day trial? I think things worked out. And now we're on our way to help build the next version of Propellus, which I call the fourth time I'm literally building this now.
Anthony (12:27)
fourth time, right?
Cool. And so AI is a big thing these days. Are you guys trying to use AI in this, this new version? And if you are, tell us a little bit how you're using it and how it's going to make things easier for you.
Mehsum Sayani (12:42)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, AI has always been our main focus. We were using it for identification of documentation, extracting data, and filling out forms. I mean, that was just the basic level of it. But now with the onset of agentic AI, we are even, and my CTO is somebody who has built certain AI orchestrations.
and an AI company as well in the past. So he's very experienced. So slowly and gradually, we're building, we're bringing AI into our processes as well. We are using AI for product development, ideation, even code writing, even strategy, even research. So what we try and do is try to use AI tools as the first option and then, you know,
anything that needs to be done. So we are not there yet, but we would like to be an AI first company from a utility standpoint. We feel that is so much of opportunity. And especially we feel lucky that we are just building this and we're building this in an environment where we have access to all these tools. mean, two years ago, I mean, all of these things were not available, at least not
Anthony (13:54)
I know, it's
come along so quick, hasn't it?
Mehsum Sayani (13:56)
Absolutely. So it's super exciting. Amazing fast learning curve, but yeah, exciting to be using and having the opportunity to use these tools.
Anthony (14:06)
Yeah, what about from your partner's side, so the agents that are using the software, what level of AI do they, obviously you talk about scanning documents and stuff like that, but are you building more AI functionality into the user side of things as well?
Mehsum Sayani (14:19)
Yeah, I think the travel space, feel, there are different levels and categories of people. So there are the small to medium travel agents, which I feel are more brick and mortar. They are possibly a little behind in terms of usage and are, initially we went to that ICP, we call it, you know, the individual customer profiles.
Anthony (14:41)
Mm-hmm.
Mehsum Sayani (14:42)
But
what we realized was adoption of new technology is a bit difficult. And then we parked that ICP first and we said, okay, let's try and focus on the larger travel agents and online travel agents. They are more receptive to adopting new technology, AI functionality tools. They are the ones who are demanding us to be able to build more functionality using AI. Very, very receptive.
I think that's our go-to ICP initially. Once we crack that, then we can go down towards the lower tier ICPs as well.
Anthony (15:17)
Right, okay, cool. And what about like government agencies and things like that? Is it purely going to be for like travel agents or OTAs or will you be able to kind of get this stuff, get your app being used by government agencies as well?
Mehsum Sayani (15:31)
No, that's a very good question. mean, we were in December, in fact, January of this year, I was actually invited by the Thai government because they got wind of us building something like this. And I actually presented to one of the Thai innovation groups in Thailand and they were very encouraging. In fact, they are working with us to give us a grant.
They're pushing us to prioritize Thailand visa and Thailand as a market. And with that, we also cracked a deal with one of their super apps, that's a travel app that is coming up, and we would be their partner for visa services. So it's been very encouraging to see governments like Thailand even being receptive. A few weeks ago, I was in Dubai.
Anthony (15:56)
Alright, okay.
Yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (16:17)
for one of conferences where I met the Pakistani ambassador to the UAE. I had a very detailed chat with him and then a follow-up conversation with him as well. He's connecting me with the UAE governments to help facilitate this. We are just at the beginning of our journey. I feel that there are 200 plus governments. They will come around.
Not all of them will be adopting this earlier on. They will definitely be early adopters. But it's going to be a journey. But we're not waiting for governments to come into play because a lot of these visas are actually online now. And a lot of these visas are being supplied and dealt with by visa agents who are basically vendors of the government. So we are trying to onboard those guys
as well. there's going to be some of them who are going to adopt early, some of them going to be laggards. But we feel that there is an immense amount of opportunity in this space. Like I said, 300 million visas are processed on an annual basis. It's a $9 billion market. And I feel that we're like 20 years behind in terms of technology. I always think about this from a banking lens, right? I always give this analogy to people that
Anthony (17:10)
Right,
amazing.
Mehsum Sayani (17:37)
banks and governments visa issuance is actually very similar and I'll explain through an analogy. Banks in essence want to give loans to the right people who pay interest and pay the principal back. That's in itself, that's as simple as what a bank does. Governments also do things similar. They want to give visas to the right people
who will come into their country, spend money, and then go back. The problem is the 2 % who don't go back. And because of those 2%, governments just lock in the entire nation of that country. They're saying, you need to add more, make it more difficult. Now, how have banks solved it? Banks are great at portfolio management and risk management.
Anthony (18:19)
Yeah, they make it difficult for everyone.
Mehsum Sayani (18:27)
Governments are not good at portfolio management and risk management. How have banks cracked it? With technology, with KYC, with data lockers, they have all the information, and credit score. The key is the credit score. So what are we doing? We're bringing all of this technology into the government space and giving them this technology with travel scoring, automation, AI, a lot.
Anthony (18:53)
I see, okay.
Mehsum Sayani (18:54)
so that we're basically using this, we're just doing an industry shift, right? And we feel that...
Anthony (18:59)
Yep. Thank you. What's
working over here and using it for something, you know, yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (19:05)
Absolutely. That is exactly what we're doing and this is how I think that this problem can be resolved.
Anthony (19:11)
Yeah, that's amazing.
Mehsum Sayani (19:12)
We feel that our current focus is the weak passports. We will continue to gain or get market share first. We'll establish ourselves as the key player that helps solve the weak passport holders. And we are starting from the travel agency and the online travel agency. So we want to focus on B2B first. Once we've established ourselves there, we can then think about whether we want to...
move into, you know, getting into government lobbying as well. We will have options whether to do strong passports. We will have options to go direct to customers. We will have options whether to look at flights, hotels and bringing on other things. Visa is just the start. Like I said, we want to be the Amazon. We want to be the ecosystem. We're just starting off with visas. That's all.
Anthony (19:59)
That's exciting. There's
and directions you can go with this. So, Mehsum, thank you for sharing all that so far. It's been really cool to hear about your story building propellers Our audience is other SaaS businesses, SaaS founders, CEOs. And I was wondering if you'd be able to give
big piece of advice to any other founders out there that may be in the startup phase like yourself.
that maybe you wish you knew before you started,
you could probably communicate to them now that might help them avoid a challenge or some problems later on down the track.
Mehsum Sayani (20:28)
Absolutely. Guys, I can help you save a hundred thousand dollars. How? Just by one big mistake that I made. If you are a business founder, the first person that you need to get on board is a technical co-founder. I cannot stress this enough. If somebody had told me this, I wouldn't be on my fourth iteration of
Anthony (20:34)
Yeah.
Mehsum Sayani (20:53)
you know, building propellers, I would probably would have solved this problem way earlier. So one is the money part, but the time, the energy, the momentum, all of this could have been done much, much better. So my piece of advice is if you're a business founder, the first person you need to engage and find is a technical co-founder. I know it's hard to do.
but that is something that I would strongly recommend.
Anthony (21:21)
that's great advice. Actually, that's the
person this week on the podcast
giving some similar advice. I'm glad you found your guy now,
definitely would have saved you some time if you found him earlier, hey.
Mehsum Sayani (21:30)
Absolutely. Very, very painful learning.
Anthony (21:34)
Yeah,
for sure.
thank you very much, Mehsum. I really appreciate all your time
journey with us today. I'd love to get you back on the podcast in another six months just to see where Propellus is and see how you guys
faired after the next iteration coming up for Propellus So if you're open to it, I'd love to get you back sometime to chat about that.
Mehsum Sayani (21:52)
Anthony, thank you so much. I would love to come and share the journey with your audience and yourself. Would love to be there.
Anthony (21:59)
Fantastic.
Mehsum Sayani (22:00)
Thank you so much.
