The Evolution of Variable Pricing Models & Revenue Management with Apurv Bansal - Founder and CEO Zenskar

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Before we get to today's interview, let me tell you about what I'm listening to. You ever wanted to sit down to a candid conversation with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands? The Current Podcast is your chance. On The Current Podcast, you'll find exclusive interviews with experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising. And don't worry, they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. Subscribe to The Current at www.thecurrent.com or anywhere you get your podcast today. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. Today, I am joined by Apurv Bansal, the founder and CEO of Zenskar. Today, we'll be covering four primary topic areas with Apurv. First, the evolving nature of usage and variable-based pricing and its impact on billing software requirements. Second, the role of the customer experience in billing. Third, revenue management beyond manual processes and Excel as a platform. And lastly, revenue operations, the impact of billing platforms. So, without Apurv, please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest here on the Metrics That Measure Up podcast. Benchmarkit conducts original benchmarking research programs in partnership with leading B2B SaaS companies including Gainsight, SalesLoft, LeanData, Pavilion, Hendo, CloudZero, and Exactly. Our original benchmarking programs result in a compelling content marketing asset in the form of both a report and interactive benchmarking portal that engages executive buyers to see how their internal performance metrics and processes measure up to their like company cohort. Our partners report that our original benchmarking research programs are a top producing content marketing asset as measured by downloads, target buyer engagement, and executive buyer awareness. If you would like to learn more about how you can partner with BenchMarket to conduct an original benchmarking research program that increases awareness and engagement with your economic buyers, send an e-mail to Ray at benchmarket.ai. That's Ray at BenchMarket with an it.ai.

**Apurv Bansal** (2:53)
Awesome, Ray. Thanks for having me over. Quick background. I'm the founder and CEO at Zenskar. I used to be a founder back in the day as well. So this is my second company, sold the previous one, went on to work at Google briefly. That's where I realized that companies as large as Google were building in-house tooling to automate billing and other financial operations.
Mainly because of kind of lack of flexible alternatives in the market. We saw a gap in the market at Zenskar. So that's a little bit about the history of the company. We're backed by Bessemer. My journey to becoming a guest on this podcast is that I ran into Ray at Saster earlier this year. We hit it off, had a good conversation, and we figured that what we chatted about would be something that Ray's guests might enjoy. So we decided to do a podcast together.

**Ray Rike** (3:42)
Okay, let's dive in now. If I'm not mistaken, you're living in New York now?

**Apurv Bansal** (3:48)
New Jersey, yes.

**Ray Rike** (3:49)
Okay, well, I recently moved to Manhattan, so we're almost neighbors there, Apurv.

**Apurv Bansal** (3:55)
Nice, nice. I didn't know you moved. Welcome.

**Ray Rike** (3:57)
Thank you. Well, okay, so here we go. We recently conducted some benchmarking research on the use of usage-based pricing. Some people call it consumption-based pricing. Now with AI, we have some value-based pricing, but it's variable with the way we bill. So I have a question. So the SaaS subscription model was initially predicated on a pretty basic subscription, number of users, number of seats. We have 15 over a month-to-month contract or annual agreement. How does this new variable-based pricing model impact how billing is handled today?

**Apurv Bansal** (4:37)
That's a good question. And I have a long answer and a short answer. So I'll try to get the short answer. The crux of it is that, you know, if your pricing is subscription-based and not usage or variable-based, then, you know, you end up selling, sending the same amount of invoices. The invoice amount is usually the same every month. So let's say I'm Zoom, right? Let's say I have a customer that bought 12 seats. I bill them 10 bucks a month. Now I'm going to bill every month 12 seats times 10 So 120 bucks month on month on month on month. And you know, some, at some point, if a user, if a customer decides to add their seats or reduce their seats, I know that beforehand. So they went from, let's say, 12 seats to 15 seats. The bill amount changes to 150 But I know the number of users beforehand, before the bill has to be sent. And that makes billing straightforward because there is no variability to it. Every, all I need is a contract with the customer. The contract clearly lays out the price and the quantity. So all the information to raise the invoice is present in the contract. And I can look at the contract, read it and send an invoice.