Why Your Community Isn’t Growing, and What To Do Instead
Kaustubh Katdare built Jatra to solve the real problems community builders face, from getting organic traffic to keeping members truly engaged.
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In this interview, Kaustubh Katdare talks about building Jatra, a platform that helps businesses grow real, engaged communities.
He shares how two decades of building online spaces shaped his thinking, and why simplicity, SEO, and real conversations matter more than ever.
Kaustubh shares:
His backstory and how he started.
How he got his first free and paid customers for his product.
What was effective in attracting customers to his product?
His competitive advantages, what gives him an edge, and insights that have proven beneficial to his operations.
Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on him.
Advice he'd offer to entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
Q. Hello! Who are you and what product are you working on currently, and who is your target audience (Age range)?
I'm Kaustubh Katdare, an electrical engineer turned online entrepreneur. I’ve been building online communities for the past 20 years. I'm a 3x TEDx speaker and have spoken on several leading business platforms.
My first venture was CrazyEngineers, an online community of engineers that grew to over 400,000 members. Currently, I’m building Jatra, a SaaS platform that empowers businesses to build organically growing communities for user acquisition and retention.
Q. What is your backstory and how did you come up with your idea? What year did you start?
I graduated in 2003 with a first-class degree in Electrical Engineering and joined a leading IT company. Back then, our internal newsgroups were buzzing with knowledge-sharing among employees. I actively participated in them.
In November 2005, I went looking for a similar space online where engineers working on exciting projects could share ideas and insights. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find anything. That sparked the idea of creating a space for engineers, a ‘crazy’ place where they could gather and help each other. That’s how CrazyEngineers was born.
Over the years, as the community grew to become Asia’s largest for engineers, I became increasingly aware of the limitations of existing community platforms. I envisioned a better way, a platform where anyone could easily build a white-labeled, thriving community. That led to the creation of Jatra.
Q. Take us through the process of building the first version of your product MVP
I had a clear vision of what features needed to go into the MVP. I built the framework in two months and spent another month crafting the key differentiators — “Post Types” and “SEO.”
My goal was to solve the common challenges faced by community builders like myself:
How to get users organically
How to keep them engaged beyond basic discussions
I also paid close attention to the UI, it had to be simple and intuitive.
Q. How many employees do you have working on your product? Do you have any co-founders?
I don’t have a co-founder, but there are some fantastic people supporting me behind the scenes. We’re currently in the process of onboarding our first team members.
Our team will always stay lean, relying heavily on automation. However, customer support will always be handled by real humans. I believe AI shouldn’t manage customer queries, even repetitive ones.
Q. How much monthly traffic do you receive?
Our marketing site attracts around 300–400 unique visitors per month. Our community, however, is growing steadily, with 1,600–2,000 unique monthly visitors. They're all high-intent users deeply interested in community building.
Q. How did you get your first customers for your product and how many free/paid customers do you have currently? (Feel free to list them out).
Our first customers came from Reddit and LinkedIn. I offered help without expecting anything in return. Eventually, some of them reached out to me, and I casually mentioned our product. They liked it, and that’s how we got our first users.
We currently have around 30 paid customers.
Q. Since you launched your product, what has worked to attract customers?
Three things have worked well for us:
Referrals from existing customers
Organic traffic driven by our own community
Sharing content on Reddit, LinkedIn, and X
Q. How is your product performing currently, and what are your plans for the future? Can you share your current metrics and revenue figures?
The product is stable and continues to improve with new features added regularly. We aren’t under pressure to grow quickly. Instead, we’re focused on helping our customers succeed in building their communities and creating detailed case studies around that.
Q. Since the inception of your business, have you gained any insights that have provided you with a competitive advantage and proven beneficial to your operations?
Talking to users has helped us tremendously. It clarified what content we need to create and how we should position ourselves. For example, the word “community” is used very loosely online, many people refer to their social media followers as a community.
We’re optimizing our platform for both SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), and we believe that’ll be a strong competitive edge.
Q. What tools have helped you grow your product?
Our community itself is our biggest growth driver, it’s the unique strength of our platform.
Beyond that, we rely on a few tools like Calendly, Zoom, Google Meet, and WhatsApp to solve various challenges.
Q. Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on you?
Influence by Robert Cialdini is a must read for every entrepreneur. I also enjoy the works of Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.
My first introduction to entrepreneurship came from Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity, it left a lasting impression.
Q. What advice would you offer to entrepreneurs who are looking to start or have just begun their journey?
Validate your idea. If there’s no competition, it might mean there’s no actual need for your product in the market.
Q. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Yes, we’re currently hiring an infrastructure engineer and a customer support executive.
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions! What is your contact info if people would like to inquire about your services? You can add all your links.
You can reach me via Email
Let me know what you learned from this interview and have a productive week! 🙏
Indie Tip of the Week
Build something because it keeps you up at night, not because it’ll look good in a launch tweet. Chasing attention is easy, but it fades. What sticks is solving a problem you actually care about, one that bugs you so much, you’d work on it even if no one noticed. Forget the pitch decks and applause. Build for yourself first.
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