100 best CEOs disrupting tech! #22 Kashif Zaman from Uptok

We talked about sales development with Kashif Zaman the CEO and Founder at Uptok. This is a video commerce platform that revolutionizes how ecommerce shopping is done.

1. How would you describe your company in an elevator pitch?
Uptok is a video commerce platform that lets you conduct 1-on-1 shopping sessions with the highest-intent shoppers on your e-commerce site.

2. What are you the best at?
As far as the product is concerned, Uptok’s AI-driven algorithm maximizes facetime between your sales reps and the most serious shoppers on your site. No competitor is focussed on e-commerce KPIs like we are.

As a team, we are best at our raw creative intuition and flawless execution at the same time. We are obsessed with details and we are always tuned into the big picture.

Something unique about our team that I am very proud of: Every member of our team came to us and joined at their own will. They were never pursued or convinced to join. We are a team of believers. Believers in the idea. Believers in the market to evolve. Believers in ourselves.

3. How did you find your first customers?
Pure hustle. We called every entrepreneur with a Shopify store that we could find until we had our first few customers. Our SEO rankings on Google helps a lot in our early days.

4. What are your customers saying about your product?
Customer’s love it. Hassan from Denmark says that our product is pure genius and the market always needed it. Jakob from Poland says that this tool is very powerful and it works better as compared to all the competitors he tried before us.

5. What are your proud achievements so far?
My biggest achievement for Uptok is Having my Cofounder Emily Rigopoulos join our journey. She is extremely talented and passionate and Uptok is lucky to have her as the Head of Customer Success.

6. What is the next big thing in your industry?
Human-to-Human Commerce (H2H) will change both B2B and B2C e-commerce, especially in the direct-to-consumer context. Video will be at the forefront of this paradigm shift and Uptok will lead the revolution.

7. What are your plans for the next 6-12 months?
Over the next 6-12 months, we will prove our core value proposition at scale. The value of video chat for online shops will become a no-brainer because we will show how it changes the conversion and order values, etc, for the types of businesses we are targeting.