From boutique lab to global CRO: How SynSmart scaled with Zoho Campaigns

The Company

SynSmart is a contract research and development organization (CRO) specializing in synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and process research and scale-up. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Navi Mumbai, India, the company offers chemistry services across the full spectrum—from milligram-scale synthesis to hundreds of kilograms—to pharmaceutical and biotech companies across the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

For the first nine years of its existence, SynSmart operated as a boutique process research lab with a small team of five to nine employees, working primarily with Indian customers. In 2023, Founder and CEO Saurabh Kapure—a pharmacy graduate and MBA with nearly two decades of pharma industry experience, including a stint as Global Head of Sales at Jubilant Biosys—decided to scale the company globally.

Since 2023, SynSmart has expanded to nearly 125 employees, grown its customer base to 40-50 clients globally, and shifted its revenue mix to 90–95% international—a near-complete reversal of its earlier India-centric model.

SynSmart entered the market with a clear differentiation strategy built on two pillars:

• A lean organizational structure that keeps overhead costs at approximately 20%, compared to the 40-45% overheads common among larger CROs.
• High-speed execution enabled by shift-based lab operations running 16 to 18 hours a day.

This operational efficiency enables SynSmart to deliver projects significantly faster while maintaining cost advantages for clients.

Kapure draws an apt analogy: "SynSmart operates more like a low-cost airline; people who are value-conscious latch onto them every single time."

To communicate this value proposition to a global audience, SynSmart built its outreach strategy around digital tools from the outset:

• Zoho CRM for customer relationship management and sales tracking.
• Zoho Campaigns for structured email marketing and customer engagement.
• LinkedIn as the primary social media channel for its B2B pharma and biotech audience.

The company maintains a structured content calendar, runs geography-specific campaigns, and continues to expand and enrich its outreach database.

The challenge

Breaking into the contract research outsourcing space as a late entrant presented formidable challenges. At least 20 competitors were already operating in a similar space within India alone, while global markets were dominated by established players with decades-long client relationships.

SynSmart's early growth depended heavily on Kapure's personal network. The company's first three to five customers came through legacy relationships built during his years in the pharma industry. However, relying solely on personal networks was not sustainable for long-term growth.

The company needed to solve three critical challenges:

• Reaching prospective customers across multiple geographies and time zones without building a large sales force or increasing marketing overhead.
• Building brand recall among decision-makers who often operate within long two-year evaluation and consideration cycles.
• Creating a scalable and repeatable customer acquisition engine that did not rely entirely on personal relationships or costly international travel.

Expanding into the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea through traditional in-person outreach would have created significant financial pressure for a company focused on maintaining operational efficiency. SynSmart needed a digital-first marketing approach capable of delivering global reach at a sustainable cost.

The solution

SynSmart addressed these challenges with a structured digital outreach program powered by Zoho Campaigns. The company established a monthly email marketing cadence combining promotional content, service capability highlights, and company updates.

Zoho Campaigns became central to SynSmart's international outreach strategy through the following capabilities:

• Geography-specific campaigns tailored for audiences in Japan, South Korea, India, the US, and Europe.
• Send-time optimization to ensure emails reach recipients when they are most likely to engage across different time zones.
• Seamless integration with Zoho CRM for synchronized customer data and segmented outreach.
• Campaign segmentation based on geography and customer profiles.
• Embedded CTAs, downloadable resources, and clickable links to identify engagement and buying intent.

What initially began as a founder-led effort managed personally by Kapure evolved into a structured team operation with a dedicated content calendar and campaign execution workflow.

The integration between Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns also strengthened SynSmart's sales process. Campaign analytics now help the team prioritize pre-sales outreach based on recipient engagement—including opens, clicks, and downloads.

Benefits and ROI

SynSmart's digital-first approach delivered measurable results and enabled the company to scale beyond its initial network-driven growth phase. After exhausting its early circle of industry contacts, the company built its next 30 to 40 customer relationships through outbound marketing and digital outreach.

Key benefits included:

• Consistent email open rates in the 20-25% range, a strong benchmark for niche B2B scientific services marketing.
• Direct pipeline contributions from long-term brand recall created through sustained email engagement.
• Global customer reach across the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea without the financial burden of constant international travel.
• Improved lead prioritization through campaign analytics and engagement tracking.
• A scalable marketing infrastructure that no longer depends on founder-led execution.

Kapure cites a specific example of a prospect pursued for more than two years who finally responded after receiving a campaign email—demonstrating the value of consistent brand visibility and long-term nurturing.

The company's outreach strategy today includes:

• Monthly email campaigns featuring company updates and service capabilities.
• Geography-specific campaigns customized for different international markets.
• LinkedIn content published weekly or twice weekly for industry engagement.
• Downloadable resources and informational content designed to generate inbound interest signals.

Kapure believes digital marketing tools like Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns are essential for businesses looking to scale internationally while maintaining operational efficiency.

Looking forward​

SynSmart's growth ambitions are aggressive and clearly defined. The company aims to triple in size over the next three years, expand from approximately 125 employees to 250-300 employees, and establish itself among the top five to seven contract research organizations operating in India.

To support this growth, SynSmart plans to deepen its use of Zoho Campaigns and refine its digital marketing operations further.

Immediate focus areas include:

• Improving geographic segmentation using country- and city-level customer data.
• Further optimizing campaign send times based on time-zone awareness.
• Leveraging analytics to better understand engagement trends across geographies and campaign types.
• Increasing marketing cadence and content production as the team scales.
• Expanding geography-specific campaigns for global audiences.

For Kapure, digital infrastructure is inseparable from business growth.

With Zoho Campaigns powering its outreach engine, SynSmart has built a scalable, globally connected marketing infrastructure capable of supporting its next phase of growth.

To learn more about SynSmart, visit their website.