Q&A with Market Medium’s Co-Founders on the Next Chapter with Vendavo

Vendavo’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Bernard, and Market Medium’s Co-Founders, Jason Bletz and Saravanan Krishnakumar, chat about joining forces and the future as one company.

In July 2022, Vendavo acquired Market Medium, a cloud-based rebate and channel management solution provider. Vendavo’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Bernard, caught up with Market Medium Co-Founders, Saravanan Krishnakumar and Jason Bletz to learn more about Market Medium’s founding mission, history, team, products, and the next chapter as part of the Vendavo family.

Mike: Can you share a bit about you and your roles at Market Medium?

Jason: My name is Jason Bletz and I’m one of the Co-Founders of Market Medium. We are extremely excited to be joining the Vendavo family. I’m overseeing the implementation of the application.

Saravanan: I’m Saravanan Krishnakumar and I’m also one of the Co-Founders of Market Medium. I am focused on managing the product strategy, development, operations, and some of the go-to-market initiatives at Market Medium.

Mike: We’re so excited to welcome Market Medium to the Vendavo family. Could you tell us a little bit about how you thought to establish Market Medium?

Jason: We started Market Medium in 2015. We have deep roots in the rebate planning and channel management process. Over the years, our team has spent time working in the industry where we were capturing, calculating, and analyzing huge amounts of data that’s exchanged between partners – and then trying to make sense of it all.

We discovered a few fascinating things along the way. First, incentive dollars always occupy the top spot on a P&L and many companies aren’t actually sure what that dollar amount is. Second, there’s always profitable gains when you can control the rebate and incentive process through execution, planning, and collaboration. Finally, the workstream is extremely underserved. We consistently see companies that are still having difficulty navigating these processes. In fact, many companies are still using manual processes and spreadsheets. So, we knew we could fill an important gap, and that’s why we founded Market Medium.

Saravanan: There are billions of dollars spent and there’s a huge need for providing good value for customers in this area.  We work with customers to help them manage billions of dollars in rebate revenue and earn substantial savings for them.

Mike: You struck a chord there, because that’s what Vendavo’s been committed to for many years now – helping companies unlock that growth and profitability. I think it’s a great fit to bring the two organizations together. But would love to hear from you, why was joining forces with Vendavo appealing to Market Medium?

Saravanan: We have a solution that can handle very large volumes of data. None of our competition can even come close to how much data we can handle. Vendavo’s price optimization solutions are a very natural fit for us.  We really view Vendavo as a leader in the pricing and CPQ space. Coming together is going to be beneficial for both companies, and it’s going to help our customers tremendously.

Jason: When we first embarked on this journey, Saravanan and I were talking about making this accessible not just for multi-national corporations, but also for smaller organizations. We spent the last few years working with our customers to help simplify the rebate processes, and they’ve been able to recognize revenue and seal margin leakage through some of the innovation and automation that comes along with Market Medium. But we still had a gap when it came to pricing. Joining forces with Vendavo is going to take us to the next level.

Mike: Jason and Saravanan, thank you so much for the time. Welcome the Vendavo family.