AiHello: The AI startup transforming digital advertising

(4 minute read)

• This AI startup is transforming the way businesses run PPC ads.

• They’re used by 5,000+ sellers including brands like Bose, L’Oreal and Russel Hendrix.

• They’ve bootstrapped their way to 7 figures in revenue over the past 3 years.

So what’s the startup and what do they do? This is the story of AiHello 📈

Founded in 2018 in Toronto, Canada by Ganesh Krishnan, AiHello is an AI startup focused on scaling revenue for Amazon sellers without increasing ACoS. 

They’ve built a software that uses gen AI to automate Amazon PPC ads, helping Amazon sellers to optimize ad performance - automate bids and manage ad campaigns.

AiHello also provides you with Amazon PPC experts, to make sure you get the most bang for your buck 💸.

AiHello is currently one of the best platforms to manage Amazon PPC ads. They’re soon planning to venture into PPC ads on other platforms as well: Google, Facebook etc.

They’re even an advanced Amazon selling partner - partnering directly with Amazon, and have a 4.6/5 🌟 G2 rating.

Backstory 👀 

Before AiHello, Ganesh worked at IBM and led their retail division - doing a lot of forecasting work.

Sales forecasting used a lot of algorithms to decide things like what PC to sell, through which channels, to which customers.

Ganesh then worked at Ebay for a bit, then started his own e-com business on Amazon.

Ganesh wasn’t wildly successful, but while selling on Amazon, had an itch to create something which could predict the sales forecasts of his products. Initially he created this tool for himself alone.

After reviewing it, some of Ganesh’s friends also wanted to test out the tool because of how easy and intuitive they found it. This is where they found PMF…

At this point, Ganesh found it easier to sell this software than to sell his own products on his e-com store, so started putting more and more time into it.

Initially Ganesh used brute-force for his algorithms which took too long since he’d manually personalise every algorithm to their specific needs. He then found out about generative AI, which automated everything for him…

This AI now automatically picked up previous sales information, and could make accurate predictions on sales forecasts - how long a product would take to sell, where it would sell best etc.

The beginnings of AiHello 🐣

The e-com order fulfillment product never ended up taking off unfortunately, so the product shut down around 2021. This is when AiHello was reborn…

Ganesh relaunched AiHello with a different product - an advertising automation software. This time it was with a co-founder: Saif ElHager.

Saif has always been a hustler, having bought his first treasury bills at age 9, buying his first stock at age 12, and doing things like reselling courses and flipping Instagram pages.

He even started a digital marketing agency - Media Surgeons, which he’d learned a lot of advertising and sales from.

Saif eventually stumbled onto Amazon ads and got in touch with Ganesh. This is when they co-founded AiHello.

What was different this time was AiHello now automated PPC ads using generative AI - a gap in the market.

Most software tools that helped Amazon sellers with PPC ad automation were just not good - either outdated or not worth using (too expensive).

AiHello initially undercut prices and provided the most value for money to grow as fast as possible. Fortunately it worked…

AiHello studied competition and provided everything their competition couldn’t - for cheaper :

• Automated bid adjustment: Helping sellers spend more on the right keywords

• Complete campaign creator: Ad builder that automates campaign creation at scale

• Keyword management: Automatically advertising on the best keywords

• A dedicated account manager: An Amazon ad expert to guide you

AiHello uses gen-AI to automate all of this, which is trained on previous ad campaigns. This means that the longer you use this software, the better it gets.

Stats 📊

Amazon is a digital Mecca in e-commerce, accounting for over 40% of all e-com sales worldwide ($540B+).

There’s over 9.7 million sellers on Amazon, and new merchants are still joining everyday - this is a huge opportunity.

Since 2021, AiHello has bootstrapped it’s way to 7 figures in revenue and currently has a team of 30, according to Saif.

They’ve already been used by over 5,000 Amazon sellers including brands like Bose, L’Oreal, Russell Hendrix and SlimFast, and are still growing.

Before you go 👋

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