Sydney-based specialist IT reseller Tekoi Consulting scored first place in the CRN Fast50 2022 with a 281 per cent increase in revenue to $17 million dollars during the 2021 to 2022 financial year, crediting its success to the company’s agility and strategic wins with Cisco.
Founded in 2020, Tekoi Consulting offers data centre security, enterprise networks and collaboration solutions, predominantly targeting small to medium businesses.
CRN spoke to Tekoi founder Nathan Georges in late 2022 where he said that the company’s wins “started off with an introduction of a $5,000 for instance and then ended up growing that to half a million and a million type size deals."
"We had, in that period, maybe five of them happen in the SMB market.”
The company highlighted its major successes over the 2021 to 2022 financial year, which included contracts totaling more than $5 million dollars to rollout edge switches to 27 sites globally.
“We had a lot of strategic wins with Cisco through acquisition accounts, growing them from small opportunities to large, however what really stood out revenue was we were able to secure a really large project from a client that was doing a global refresh.”
“So rather than them refresh 27 sites globally with 27 resellers, or a mix of resellers,” Georges shared Tekoi was able to take on the whole project.
“We were able to put together an offer for them where they procure all from one region, and they were able to access not just better pricing, but better management of the opportunity."
"Better rollout plan, less procurement headaches and just simplified everything from them for that so they did their global network refresh with us.”
Georges said that in 2022, this represented half of Tekoi’s revenue.
Tekoi is also going global.
“We expanded our coverage; we now have an office in the UK."
"We did the first global GPN (global partner network) deal in Vietnam. We had a client who bought from us, an Australian based client, opened up an office in Vietnam."
"We did the first-year deal under this special program Cisco have in that region.”
Tekoi were also proud of displacing a tier one reseller to become the preferred supplier for one of Australia’s largest law firms.
Georges credited the timing of Tekoi’s launch to the company’s quick success.
“I think when COVID hit, the market stopped spending and then a year or so into it, it started going nuts making up the spending it didn't do, so a lot of business happened in a short period."
"And now we’re starting to see it retracting again,” Georges said.
“It was the market conditions were right and we executed on them."
"At the time, we pushed from pushed really hard, brought deals forward, worked closely with Cisco, had great success with them and other vendors.”
“One of our main products we work with is called Cisco Meraki. And this technology when you sell this product, it usually ships within a day or two."
"So, in terms of cash flow, we could take an order get it shipped and delivered within a few days and then be able to invoice and get our money for the next deal."
"So, we were turning around a lot of these deals quite quickly.”
He said it took around a year for Tekoi to start seeing bigger deals that took weeks or months.
How Tekoi stands out against competitors
“Our main differentiator, from what I've observed in the industry is when you're small, you're able to be agile - respond quickly as you don't have 10 layers of approval.
"So, you can give a really good customer experience. Naturally, as you get bigger, that becomes less possible.”
“By the time we had been introduced, quoted and wrapped the deal, our competitor has taken three weeks just to start requesting pricing from Cisco," Georges gave as an example.
“There's always a gap for small players, small players like us, just because the bigger ones just become too busy and too inundated with process whereas we don't have those challenges and we're just able to give a better experience purely for that reason.”
In 2021, Tekoi won NetApp partner of the year, and they were part of Cisco’s top five Tier 2 partner resellers in Australia, placing second in Meraki sales for ANZ non enterprise.
Challenges as an IT start-up
However, while the company achieved several fast successes, Georges acknowledged several challenges in Tekoi’s journey.
“As an IT start-up, credibility was a massive challenge,” Georges said, referring to the lack of trust partners would have to take on a start-up for their business.
He also spoke about the impacts of COVID-19 regarding supply constraints and increased wait times.
Georges also said the “numerous price rises” over the 2021 to 2022 financial year was challenging
“I think we saw four price rises in three months. That was from November to January. It was crazy. That was a massive challenge.”
“Trying to keep the customer interested… and keep a straight face while constantly having to refresh and increase pricing is difficult but that's just managed through managing relationships, managing people and communication was how we've got across that.”
On the future of Tekoi, Georges said: “I think that the goal is really to stay profitable, continue to provide a great customer experience to our clients and number three is just really enjoy life balance.”
Georges also said it was a goal of his to win the CRN Fast50.
“I’ve been to CRN Fast50 the last four years or so, always worked for companies, never won, but we’d go because it was always a great event.”
Applications are now open for the 2023 CRN Fast50!
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
