Poka Labs GTM brain

Poka Labs helps industrial manufacturers and distributors price, draft and sell quotes using AI and their existing commercial data.

category

Industrial pricing and quoting automation

market profile

  • text: Industrial sales teams work through emailed RFQs, large catalogs, customer agreements and changing costs while buyers wait for quotes.
  • text: Pricing knowledge and exceptions often reside with experienced staff and must be applied consistently across sales teams.

personas

  • title: VP of sales at a chemical manufacturer
    pains:
    • Reps lose time finding product and customer-specific pricing information
    • Slow responses risk losing business to a faster competitor
  • title: Pricing or commercial excellence director
    pains:
    • Cost changes erode margins when prices are not updated
    • Customer agreements, margin floors and approval rules vary by quote
  • title: Inside sales or quote desk manager
    pains:
    • Messy email requests require repeated manual entry
    • New reps lack the contextual knowledge held by experienced colleagues

icp

  • text: Chemical, materials and other industrial manufacturers with complex product catalogs and recurring inbound RFQs.
  • text: Manufacturers and distributors with ERP, customer agreements and quote histories that can inform pricing, from smaller firms to large enterprises.

message pillars

  • text: Scale the judgment of experienced salespeople to every quote.
  • text: Convert incoming requests into a complete quote using existing commercial rules.
  • text: Keep humans in control of pricing decisions.
  • text: Work with existing systems and data.

objections

  • objection: Our pricing has too many customer-specific exceptions.
    response: Pilot with real RFQs and encode agreements, margin floors and approval rules while keeping the team responsible for review.
  • objection: We cannot replace our ERP to deploy another tool.
    response: Poka describes connecting existing ERP, inboxes and spreadsheets; validate integration with the buyer's specific systems.
  • objection: How do we protect sensitive price and customer data?
    response: Review the security documentation and SOC 2 report and agree access and data handling before connecting systems.

competitors

  • name: Distro
    website: https://distro.app/
    why: Automates industrial distributor RFQs and quoting using catalog and pricing context.
  • name: Ventura
    website: https://ventura.ai/
    why: Offers AI quote preparation from RFQs for manufacturers and distributors.
  • name: Paperless Parts
    why: Competes in manufacturing quoting, particularly custom parts and job shops.

influencers

  • name: Malay Shah
    why: Co-founder and CEO.
  • name: Andrew Bass
    why: Co-founder and CTO.

keywords

  • industrial RFQ automation
  • chemical manufacturing quoting software
  • AI pricing manufacturer
  • automated quote generation ERP
  • industrial price optimization
  • manufacturer sales automation

voice

  • Practical
  • Industry-specific
  • Human-centered

signals

  • text: A commercial team is hiring quote desk or inside sales staff to cope with incoming RFQs.
  • text: Raw material cost changes or inconsistent customer pricing are putting pressure on margins.
  • text: A manufacturer has a large product catalog and quote data scattered across ERP, inboxes and spreadsheets.

stack

  • ERP
  • CRM

hiring

  • Founding Deployment Strategist

pricing

model: unknown

motion

sales_led

channels

  • LinkedIn
  • industry events
  • founder-led sales

confidence

medium

Founders

  • name: Malay Shah
    title: Founder/CEO
    role: CEO
    bio: Malay is the Co-Founder and CEO of Poka Labs. He earned degrees in Chemical Engineering and Economics from NC State and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His previous background was in the specialty chemicals industry, where he worked across various operations and sales roles in China, Germany, and the US, saving over $50MM for chemical companies. He's passionate about building AI in industrials.
  • name: Andrew Bass
    title: Founder/CTO
    role: CTO
    bio: Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Poka Labs, where he leads product and engineering. Before Poka, he built critical data infrastructure at Meta and revenue optimization software at a Series A mobility startup that was later acquired. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MS in Engineering from Harvard SEAS.

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