Samay Kohli on automation

Samay Kohli spent 12 years at GreyOrange, scaling it to over $100 million in revenue and a $3 billion valuation at its peak, making it one of the world’s largest warehouse robotics companies. Two years ago, he started again with Budy, this time in the US senior care industry. In this industry, decisions are emotional, sales cycles can run for years, and multiple stakeholders are involved. While the market sits at the intersection of real estate, healthcare, and hospitality, most sales still depend on manual follow-ups and scattered tools. Budy builds digital workers for sales teams: AI teammates that handle follow-ups, scheduling, and lead management across CRMs, calendars, and inboxes. Instead of adding another layer of software, Budy went zero UI-UX and focused on enabling sales teams in an industry with 99% inbound leads to manage their cold leads better. Today, Samay joins Siddhartha (Partner at Neon Fund, and a proud investor in Budy) and shares his journey from building robots to building digital teammates for a very non-traditional industry. 00:00 – Trailer 01:00 – What Budy is building for senior care 05:15 – Real Estate × Healthcare × Hospitality 06:25 – Zero UI UX technology 10:09 – AI teammates not assistants 12:03 – How sales teams operated before Budy 12:51 – A ninety nine percent inbound industry 13:45 – The real cost of senior care homes 15:35 – Can a CRM alone solve this 17:55 – Direct benefits of a digital worker 20:49 – Two founder archetypes 22:06 – Can lights out operations become real 24:49 – What Samay underestimated about the market 25:58 – The largest players in the industry 29:07 – Treat your customer’s company like your own 30:52 – Entrepreneurship as a profession 35:36 – Unlearnings as a second time founder 37:30 – What digital workers actually are 39:47 – The original promise of SaaS 42:04 – The next decade of digital workers 45:25 – Digital workers that read best selling books 47:26 – Will Claude build CRMs 49:38 – Business etiquette across the world 55:18 – How a second time founder chooses investors 01:01:00 – Why every team member should track the P and L 01:02:14 – How Samay’s view on growth evolved ------------- India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it. This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India. What is Neon Fund? We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before. Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon. ------------- Check us out on: Website: https://neon.fund/ Instagram:   / theneonshoww   LinkedIn:   / beneon   Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww Connect with Siddhartha on: LinkedIn:   / siddharthaahluwalia   Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7 ------------- This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.