When your competition is the status quo | Apurba Pradhan

EverestLabs is building physical AI for material processing and recycling facilities - AI vision systems, robotics, and agentic AI that automate sorting and recovery in some of the most operationally chaotic environments in industrial processing.In a recent episode of Marketers of Technology, we sat down with Apurba Pradhan, Chief Product Officer and Head of Marketing at EverestLabs, to learn how the company markets AI and robotics to an industry where trust is the primary barrier to adoption, and where the real competition is not another vendor - it is inertia itself.Topics Discussed:How Apurba transitioned from design engineering and photonics into product marketing and eventually CPO and Head of MarketingWhy EverestLabs competes against inaction, not other AI and robotics vendorsHow the company builds trust with operators who are skeptical of automation and are not early adoptersWhy peer site visits and roadshows became the most effective sales tool, outperforming digital campaignsHow EverestLabs sells performance as a service, not hardware or softwareHow the company is scaling from 5-10% TAM penetration to broader market adoptionWhy EverestLabs entered Australia and is now expanding into the UKThe agentic AI roadmap and how EverestLabs plans to build additional products on top of their physical AI dataGTM and Technology Adoption Lessons:When the market does not trust the technology, peer proof beats everything: Apurba said the most effective marketing tool the company has found is hosting site visits and roadshows where skeptical operators meet other operators who are already running Everest Labs systems. No digital campaign competed with what a peer saying "this is working" could do for the sales cycle.Sell the outcome, not the components: Everest Labs does not sell AI, cameras, robotics, and software separately. They sell performance. Apurba was explicit: "We sell an outcome. And you know, in order to deliver that outcome, what do you need? You need AI, you need hardware first capturing data..." The all-inclusive subscription strips away the technical complexity the operator cannot manage.The real competition is inertia: Apurba described competition not as other AI vendors but as the habit of running plants manually. The question is not whether operators prefer another product, it is whether they trust automation at all. Understanding that framing shapes how Everest Labs positions every conversation.Subscription pricing that beats the status quo closes faster: Everest Labs structured its subscription so that it costs less than what operators are currently spending. "The ROI or the payback is nearly immediate." At that price point, the conversation shifts from cost to trust.// Sponsors: Front Lines -- Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service