Transcript for:
Lecture on Consumption, Brand Building, and E-commerce

so I have been looking into consumption and each one of you I will explain how but brings a totally different insight into [Music] consumption I want people who want to build a brand today young guys 0 to one to learn everything from all of your [Music] experience do [Music] so I have been looking into consumption we created a fund to invest into companies around consumption uh there seems to be a double standard in a way wherein the reported numbers on the top are looking good but everyone I talk to on the ground is talking about how consumption seems to have dropped in the last two or three months uh this could be in travel this could be in fashion this could be eCommerce uh across segments very unlike uh year leading up to an election consumption seems to be dropping uh as an investor and also talking to people who want to build a brand from Z to one or to scale a brand in consumption which I broadly believe is the larger India opportunity we have too few independent Indian brands in consumption which have scaled uh so I thought this would be opportune the timing is great and each one of you I will explain how but brings a totally different insight into consumption don't be fooled by Raj I think people have seen one facet of Raj but the other more interesting facet I think we'll all get to learn today as I have in my time with Raj uh since you're here for the first time would you like to tell us a bit about yourself how did anun begin where did he begin how did you arrive at Mena or creating Mena give us like a few minutes I just want to make sure it's not boring yeah actually by chance and a little bit a random path I did 15 years in Consulting before that start from the very beginning born born in Chennai grew up in Chennai did engineering parents my father was a professional worked in the Auto industry he worked at a company Hindustan Motors uh which actually I think makes or used to make among the more iconic cars the Ambassador and the contesta so he sort of did that um so I grew up in Chennai but I spent a bit of time in Kolkata bit of time in indor all of that um did engineering which seemed like the logical thing at that time you know you did engineering or were a doctor the startup was actually hadn't really you know made it this was 94 was when I graduated um so 98 is when I graduated from college and then I went and did engineering again and I always thought I wanted to be an auto guy um my dream job actually at that point was to design engines at cumins um instead I joined McKenzie which is a consulting firm um they paid slightly more I had a loan how much did McKenzie pay back in the day McKenzie at that time for an would pay $50,000 wow and this was in the US I'm guess in the US so I joined in the US and they were hiring Engineers they were hiring Engineers so I was among the first Automotive manufacturing analyst type Engineers that they hired at that time Miki was getting into Auto and operations so since I didn't do Automotive in real life I thought I'll do it through Consulting I always thought I do it for two years I ended up staying for 15 so lived in China for about 3 four years us 67 and then came back and spent about four five years China when 2002 to 2005 so anyway to got the long story short did McKenzie for a long time I came back to India because my wife wanted to come back to a family run business Diagnostic lab so we came back to Chennai and started the McKenzie office there uh did that got elected senior partner and then left did minra which is my fashion experience which is quite unusual how did you go from that to being CE of minra um a bit again I think um I met sain bini and Mukesh um what did you think of them personally what did I think of them personally I think each of them brought very very different things to the table U Mukesh was all about people in culture sain was all about Vision big picture Benny was the Ops guy execution Ops Etc so I thought they were a very interesting group of people they had just bought minra when I met them I actually this happened because one of the good and the bad their friends of mine they won't feel bad they friends of mine as well what is the bad part you said really no I think the bad part is by the way I think they could have figured out more complimentarity amongst each other they didn't get along I think at that time they all got along now I think as things evolve and companies evolve I think they all evolved into very different people who was right and who was wrong amongst the three of I don't think uh one was right or one was wrong I think by the way it is still the most successful exit that I think India has produced so I think they did something right much more right than wrong uh since or their friend maybe you know a little bit more but um uh but essentially uh I so it happened by chance so I do a lot of stuff based on Instinct and people and some macros so may not be quite like investing but you know for me people matter so you make the bet on the person and I thought they always put the company first and I bet on them I think e-commerce was a 10e trend so bet on that what year was this this was 2015 so 14 and 15 is when I started with minra and actually by the way uh fashion in e-commerce was a very logical Choice it's the only one with high gross margins at that time I mean Beauty Etc came much later so decided we'll try it what's the worst that can happen uh turned out to be great really enjoyed the experience so that's was my first I mean at that time by the way just to give you perspective I didn't know the difference between a knit and a woven I never I mean I was an automotive a knit garment and a woven garment or a denim I mean I could tell a difference between a casting and a forging but that was was n particularly helpful um so did that for 4 years really enjoyed it uh thought there was something interesting about building um flip cart sold to Walmart had thought I would be more entrepreneurial how big was mintra during your time it sort of went from call it 2 250 million to a little over a billion and a half of sales of sales gmv would have been higher right um so it went actually it was and the private brand business of mintra at the same time also went from 7 8% to call it almost 30% which is what drove profitability so we were among the most profitable pieces of the flip cart ecosystem not amongst we were the most profitable piece of the flipcart ecosystem so I think it was quite valuable um so did that then uh thought I would do something more entrepreneurial so I invested some money into a company called medlife which is an e- Pharmacy business why E Pharmacy I think by the way here I should have done more homework uh gross margins were lower so I should have should have that up but it seemed interesting it was uh medlife was a company which was completely privately funded so Prashant was the founder part of the alham family and Tushar basically put all of their personal money in there were no external investors uh it was a small business at that time 40 50 crores a month relative to the mintra scale right um so got in got in as the CEO I also put in money I bought 10% of the business um there were no Exel investors so it was relatively easy to put in money um put some money in went through a humbling experience trying to raise money MH uh you know I had done a bunch of raising money through the flip card ecosystem and everything seemed easy um you sort of go out independently and try and raise money I think it's quite tough uh we were not able to raise money at medlife we went through multiple iterations I think at that time if you remember we work happened yeah right uh and then everything went into a freeze and then right after that Co happened so you know you got into this but we got quite lucky coid which destroyed many other businesses actually created a huge Tailwind for e- pharmacy right because everybody started shopping online the government changed uh regulations and looked at it more favorably consolidation started to happen net meds got bought at that time by Reliance just before this and then we were the independent one 1 mg got bought by tatas so we got bought by farm e um turned out to be a very good deal at that point not not but essentially they provided lots of liquidity because after that they continue to raise and raise and raise right so after the pharmacy sort of buy I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do um I could have gone and been an investor or joined a venture capital firm I you know you just did a podcast recently but I felt like I was an operator um just very interesting thing I think is um in India we're mostly still an unbranded Market I think in almost all spaces especially in fashion especially in fashion uh also true in beauty also true in home decor which are the three spaces that we are in so large unbranded Market second is I think the friction of building Brands is becoming less you know call it for 140 150 rupees maybe the rate has changed slightly but 140 150 rupees you can get to 23,000 PIN codes over 26,000 you mean as a delivery fee as a delivery fee I mean you know if you think about unil you think about Maro is that time depend dep if you want to deliver in one day versus one week does the price change last not really so I think there's break points I think there's a within two day two to 2 and a half day delivery and then there is a 2 and a half to 5 six day delivery and is that also based on weight it is based on weight um so most of actually volume value ratios are among the most efficient in fashion and in Beauty right it's very bad when you do large appliances because you ship large amounts of air so but now for at least fashion that category where it's it's not very heavy and not very volumetric for 140 rupees you can get to or beauty you can get to most parts of India so you don't need a very large distribution Network to reach customers at least in the initial stages second I think brand building now influence of brand building happens a lot actually online e-commerce and fashion is maybe 10 11% roughly overall e-commerce is slightly lower given grocery will bring it down but I would say what is influence online will be 50% right so brand building can happen very differently so that was the second thesis the third is it's very easy to start in India very hard to scale in India I think the scaling is boring it's about efficiency you know we made jokes about time and efficiency I think efficiency is really what drives a lot of scale you have to do Performance Marketing well you to do sourcing well you to design these are all like boring things after you get the product Market fit right to continue to scale and I felt if you were to say 100 rupees spent on fashion and India yeah how much is spent where online versus offline online will be 10 11 rupees right the rest will be much organized how much is unorganized I would say still I mean k may also have a point of view on this by I would say by the way 60% is still disorganized right I think ready to stitch is still a very large segment most of ethnic which is a very large portion of fashion is still unorganized you go to your nearby Taylor you go to your nearby store it's not really a brand right is that close to being disrupted uh I think there is um I think it's a 5year journey I don't think it's like it happens overnight right I think the first big push has happened already so to give you a sense nikil I think mintra used to be when mintra started right mintra used to be 2 3% fashion penetration online it's now 11% I mean obviously by the way growth of mintra growth of ago growth of XYZ between 2015 to now 2015 to now when the market itself is growing and this is all branded right so I think there's a real opportunity in my mind I think it'll continue cyclically for the next 5 10 years this penetration will go up I think if I remember the numbers correctly and this little outdated but China is in the mid-20s in terms of penetration in fashion the US is 1718 by penetration you're talking about online online penetration too as a as a as a measure and how quickly is this Market growing the overall Market is growing a little bit over GDP branded is growing 2 3x faster because unbranded to branded is happening and online by the way will grow faster we can talk about the current situation but if you take a three four year view it's growing reasonably fast and can you also explain what Mensa is in the scale today yeah so um I don't want to get into a lot of scale and so on but I think we have it's essentially a house of Brands uh we have about 20 Brands we have brands in Fashion Beauty and home why those three categories one is because I knew something about it second is it's high gross margin category um also it's a large stamp what are the margins typically 50 60% gross margin right u in in beauty of course it's higher but in fashion at least 55 60 in Beauty 70 80 right uh depending on what area of beauty that you get to perfumes is high etc etc right so um we're trying to build a house of Brands it's a very simple thesis um we get buildings which are half finished but with a good basement and a good foundation and we build them out into hopefully skyscrapers right I mean the number of thousand CR brands in the country is very very very few right we spoke about this a little while ago I think the goal for me I think is over the next five seven years could you build five 6,000 CR Brands right in each of these spaces and I think it's possible I think you can build them very differently you can build them more efficiently lots of lessons learned from the previous experiences so trying to see if you can do it more efficiently and effectively this time men is doing about 200 million now say yes and raised about 200 million yes and not burning much money anymore no we're not burning at the iida level um money but I think you know there's still working capital investment and so on because a lot of people watching this are not just entrepreneurs trying to start a business y but also investors right what is a good multiple to pay while you're investing in a fashion a and in a be Beauty B brand yeah so I mean look from an e to EV multiple I think you know a lot of the fmcg brands trade at 4050 EV toida and I think fashion by the what e to ad sorry uh Enterprise Value to the earnings before interest taxes depreciation entprise value Enterprise Value is the overall value of the business right which is what is the value of the equity of the business um what if I were to ask you for a simpler M multiple in terms of sales so I think a revenue multiple is what I think you're looking for are you considering sales as Revenue I'm thinking it's the same in this case right no I'm there is no gmv when you're running a brand right so when you're running a brand I think it's accounting Revenue right I mean whatever is my Whatever Gets recorded as accounting Revenue are you also a platform where you sell all the brands no you're not no we're not so we do have d2c sites for each of Our Brands but we are not a platform I don't want to compete with my end customers whether it's a mintra or an Amazon or a Flipkart right I think there by the way the cost of traffic is very high and you've spent a lot of money building it does that make sense yeah so sales to so sales to multiple I think varies niku my sense is I think a 5x would be interesting 5x on fashion would be interesting Beauty I think between four and six no actually maybe 6 s um I think food will be probably lower uh will be food you mean like qsr finr yeah yeah I mean in Mena we don't do it but if you actually did like um um a fresh food with with a cloud kitchen type thing I think the multiples will be low yeah is backward integration a bit big part of yes uh we would like to um we're starting to do a little bit of it I mean we have one peanut butter brand uh which has a captive manufacturing because there I mean literally you uh I mean The Taste is everything it's a small machine yeah yeah yeah it's a small machine as well so um so we do that uh we would like to backward integrate we would like to sort of um make have more control over supply chain but roughly nck going back a little bit to what do we do just to simplify a little bit right I think we want to build Global consumer Brands out of India I think we want to use technology to do it slightly differently and more Capital efficiently I think that's it that's a little bit of what we're trying to do if I had to phrase it in my my own language can I say you pick a bunch of mediumsized Brands yes and Hope by putting them together adding backward integration and Tech together they'll be more valuable than they are on their own uh not really I think by the way the Synergy part of it is for sure true MH um but I think the reality is you do a lot of work in brand building and growing them and so on right so it's not just a Synergy across a portfolio it is so we have 20 Brands there are 10 brands that are what we call breakout Brands which are growing much much faster than the market profitable blah blah blah so you really invest in brand building in them so the way I think about it is unil and PNG built Brands a certain way because there was a certain set of constraints I think we can build Brands very differently because the constraints are very different and so over the next 10 year period can you build out a fairly large consumer brand business out of India but I by the way think there's a global opportunity because I think the Arbitrage at some level both in distribution and in sourcing is also very high right so you can actually build it out for the world and I think that's the exciting opportunity so by the end of today uh two objectives one if somebody is starting a brand I think a lot of people in India right now want to start a a restaurant food brand fashion brand makeup brand perfume brand mixer brand there's so many different things that people are trying to do right I think we need to get them from 0er to one Y and walk through all the intricacies of that we need to figure out where the black holes are where something needs to be built and if you're building it how do you build it but is there a way I can ask you some questions the course okay good I'm looking for what do you want to ask we let it so we both went for breakfast before yesterday and uh he was being so KY about so many personal details of his life so Anand is a very colorful character okay he collects wine he has 6,000 bottles of wine 3,000 but we're not talk 3,000 3,000 bottles of wine stored in a vault in Chicago and he's obsessed with wine I know Kish is also into wine so you both all I'm not at all into wine but anyway you're not no okay I know Raj is not into any of he doesn't drink yeah but we'll come back to the personal side of your story later Raj needs no introduction Raj is more popular than uh many people I know but the one thing people don't know about Raj is uh his insight into consumption is really different he has spent a large part of his life building a detergent brand Y and uh if I were to tell you a personal story he started a new company called House of X and when he was starting that company we both were talking about uh you know how we can work together on it and the very very impressive thing about Raj is we were trying to beat him down on the valuation and the price and trying to get 20% 30% into this company because evidently we believed in Raj and all that he can accomplish but in 24 hours or 48 Hours he went to another venture capital fund uh light speed Y and he raised more money at three times the valuation and the duration between beginning and end of that conversation was less than 48 hours fabulous and I found that incredibly impressive impressive and maybe you start there what what convinced whoever at light speed to hear your pitch and fire that quickly is it just that Indian VCS don't do diligence or is it something else I I genuinely don't know about this honestly I think uh what worked I think two or three things which I would like to say which I believe that it worked one of them was before I started pitching to you or anyone or like your friends larger group I got it tested by anant I got it tested by you I got it tested by warun and gazel I went down and I actually got my pitched my pitch crafted by at least 12 or 13 Stell Founders in the India who I know I think that's such an incredible ins anyone pitching so I actually like reached out to all of them flat down sat with them try to understand and asked everybody to just not give me feedback actually ask them to play Devil's Advocate I was like just beat me down you know why do you think this like I am coming here and I know this will work tell me why this will not work and because they gave me a lot of Loops probably that helped me that was first second I think the like why a lot of funds were interested in doing so first there was a growing interest in this space where can you build media Le Brands content Le Brands Creator or influencer industry Le brands was an interesting space because this was really popping in China Korea and US like this was there were a bunch of companies were doing and especially when you like different ways China has like live Commerce and stuff Korea is more into Beauty but different ways and people were coming up with it sorry when you said China's 20% online how much of that is streaming I don't have the number off the top of my head but a large portion of but I think now there's a fairly large chunk which is% live streaming is big big 15 20% of that will be live streaming now I think 15 20 or 50 no I don't think it's 50 I don't think it's 50 at least we should check the facts but my sense is it'll be like 15 20% it can't be so much it will not be so much what do you think about live streaming works why do people shop so much on live streaming so I'll tell you I think uh please go ahead please go ahead so I I'll complete I'll complete the loop and then we'll come to live live streaming so I think there was like a growing interest in it and the third reason why people sort of maybe believed in what we were doing is because is of my past experience and the team which were helping me doing it so my past experience was I started doing business and I was 16 with my father and he was a small detergent manufacturer who used to completely discard branding like he used to not believe in DET interesting he was like I want to build a great product and if I've built a great product it'll work so there was no marketing no sales team no distribution no branding he's like it just this will work I'll give it to one man one guy and then automatic and he was doing it for 30 years right and he was able to do like I think when I joined he was doing around 40 lakhs a year in Revenue so that was a business scale I joined and then when I joined it and I took over we divided the company into two parts that one was Market development one was product development we learned that through PNG so I took over the market side build distribution went on villages to Villages build to distribution H and built a stellar distribution of 200 Distributors and scaled that brand like within 18 months we were 10x of what we were doing then another 18 months we were like 10x of what we were doing so it just scaled and we went on from like a small Factory to now like four five so what worked that was in branding and marketing the detergent two things which were really really different which I believe we were doing we went to Villages where people thought nobody will buy premium so what we essentially started doing our detergent was 75 rupes a kg which was at that time tide was doing okay uh and usually in villages there was G and wheel which were doing absolutely bang on which is 50 rupes and Below 50 rupes so we went to these villages we told them every time you're wearing expensive clothes this is an expensive detergent for you expensive clothes so that clicked on in smallest in the remot remotest of villages where there were 10,000 population 20,000 population so I went on really deep so from there on the demand started beginning the second thing the second Insight I want to really thanks sir uh it came from Big Bazar my schooling was done there and what I saw in big Bazar there was my B biggest homeworks I used to do okay after my college after my work I used to stand in big Bazar for like hours and for months I how old were you I was 17 very weird kid yeah how many kids stand in big Bazar at 17 you know I don't think it's a weird get just I think I was so insecure that I wanted to like get r rich or make money so quickly that I was fine I think I come from family where I was always an inferior kid like to to everybody my cousins were Toppers academically academ then everywhere like I was not able to speak in English properly till my till I reached 12th so social group were like making fun of me tell us a bit about that where did you grow up indor so I was in indor and school called national public school what uh maradi family Cindi family Cindi family Cindi family how can you not be good at business so I that's no that was a learning I I saw my father growing so I went from I actually saw my father growing from in number if if you want to put it in lifestyle cycle like from one bhk to a bungalow like I saw his first car which was a third hand santro it happened in front of me his first Activa happened in front of me so I think that helped me a lot and because I was not and I was in a school where everybody you know typical like a indoor tier two City where two or three of your friends are like politicians you know like this happens like two or three friends are like someone someone's son or someone's Chacha or Kaka owns like a BMW so you always like jealous of them so because I was like right kind of inferior to people who had money more power than me uh not speak able to speak in English not like academically good so I was like I want to prove myself I want to go out and that's why like I used to just find out opportunities where I can do it and the his choice was because my father is into it let me help him scale because in fact I tried I applied in like 60 70 companies fmcg companies for internship nobody replied so nothing worked so I stood in big Bazar I saw something very weird which I thought was very insightful at that time this is 2013 14 I guess 14 probably so everybody was move this is indor showroom uh Treasure Island everybody was moving from solids to liquids and that was very very killer for me as detergent as deter no no no everything so from bathing soaps you were going to shower gels hand soaps to handwash gels dishwash bars to dishwash what year was this 201 just started just start right and all the ads on television why so life boy DET all they were big they were doing only hand washes they stopped advertising so I was like because they are advertising liquids in big Bazar the the biggest the biggest uh you know display is of these these products of these products I was like okay that's interesting and people were buying and this a significantly at a higher price and people were spending less time while choosing their liquids while then soaps so I was like killer killer category okay so saw that and then at that time in big Bazar yeah and in all kirana stores and everywhere there used to be more at that time as well how does one spot these trends for somebody trying to build zero to one so maybe I like to go on this but anyway so I saw that and time I how my framework was why dishwash gel I chose and that became on one of our biggest product dishwash gel because there was hand I guess right only women so there were two products I thought there's an opportunity because there are two products I can do and they both were very distinctively colored green and yellow so I was like two different products yellow may be opportunity green may be opportunity let's try to do something and did you figure this out by sitting in a supermarket yeah in front of kirana stores I saw that in Kiran experiment I'll tell you something I'll tell you why why it works is with every transition there is something you know every Market's dream is to increase the per kilo or per liter price of everything from soap to what do you call called liquid is a increase of price and upgrading of customers and something comes about like modern retail came about and they were able to sell a new category and a new product and big Bazar always worked on category creation so any new categories I think we were the player that time to create a new category and move up the letter for the consumers so it's a simple story of a biscuit Pari pal is 100 rupees a kilo and you can now go up to cookies which is 400 rupees a kilo and go up to chocolates which start from 1,000 rupees a kilo so it's always upgradation I think after liquid the tablets have come in now correct correct why is it dependent on how much the shipping cost is no no no it's all about upgrading in life everything does the same job so a biscuit 100 rupees glucose biscuit uh it's the vanity and the ego which you create through marketing anding also I believe that if you can find out a way to make people lazy you can do a great job like you'll be able to sell more if you cut down the time Tak cut down the so because so powder think of it you open powder you have to like put up a scoop or you don't know how much you're putting you don't know you don't know how to carry it I think all the brand marketers do something called the neural linguistic programming they condition your brain to look at things in a different way and accept what they are saying M so it was like the classical advertising of coke earlier it was always shown on a beach and it quenches your TST they will show a hot summer and whenever you're drinking Coke you used to feel that it's quenching your thirst no but I going to say I think uh if you if you start now I think you can be much more I think there's a lot more data available than there was earlier right so I have by the way a few Brands where the product development happens primarily through thinking through search so I have a brand called botanic right you different thinking through search yeah so what happens search on what Google search on Google search on Amazon search on Flipkart search on whatever else so how do you get that data you it's uh it's an API that you can integrate with so Amazon allows you to integrate and allows you to get the data it's completely legitimate you don't get competitor data you get cost can somebody building a brand afford that yes it's very inexpensive so if you're starting now sorry I'm forgetting the name there is third party software which costs like in the hundreds of rupes a month type thing right and tell you what people are searching for in all these it gets you what people are searching for and that's a very good way to sort of figure out where are the null sets so what people look for is where are people searching and not finding anything M and that's what start launching right so you know you know we've we've launched a bunch of interesting products right um uh you know including vitamin C serums Etc which are not new but they're searching for a different format of a vitamin C they're searching for vitamin C 50 ml and you find that there is not that many that are there in the 50 ml so I think the amount of data that's available and free and easy for anybody watching this podcast is quite stunning and therefore you can be much much better in my view I don't think it takes away anything from going and seeing right right but you can also use this to make a better decision this is not part of the podcast I'm like I I've heard so many different stories about this podcast I don't know which part is real and which part is like ask you can ask it's good you can take a walk guys I didn't realize this do you know the number of transacting customers online in India how many huh how many 10 crores 100 million yeah I was just thinking you designed it this way he's very offline first he digital first or social first yeah so that was a thought process going on because this is the combination of this is today's brand building right I'm actually very curious to learn about this social and commerce yeah I know I know and hype yeah so we were where were we why did people invest in me yeah yeah okay H so so the because of this background where I was doing this two things worked really well one was we went on Village and village where like smallest cities where people thought that nobody will buy premium and we were massive Believers that if you can sell like if you can teach them the value of it they'll buy obviously the volumes are going to be less but maybe there's worth a shot because you don't stand a chance in front of un lier or PNG in the place where they anywh dominate okay that was first and second was a marketing or a branding how do I say framework that I still use is we say like I believe in if I have let's say 200 rupees I would only pick up one person instead of trying to promote it to 200 people people used to believe that if right this was the basic believe in distribution like if you're available you can you can sell so how do I get my brand seen more so the first thing is do I have enough money to get seen do I have enough marketing brain to get seen do I have enough so none of us is that I was like okay let's compare me versus whim because whim was our biggest competitor in dishwash gels so Wim has more money than me to advertise in India yes Wim has more money than me to advertise in my state yes whm has more money to advertise than me in my city yes but does he have more money to Market to these 10 houses in my Colony probably not because if if I have only 10,000 rupees and if I'm only promoting in one Colony I'll be seen in that entire Colony versus MNC brand is that an important Insight if you're starting a fresh yeah micro geography so in distribution and like physical distribution this worked well because my whole Colony started believing that oh because in the beginning in distribution people so here's what I believe like you know there's a journey which a customer goes through convers uh convers ation convincing and conversion okay so first is a customer ask himself or herself they converse with themselves that is it happening everywhere so that's a conversation going on there's something right then second is convincing the convincing is you talk to your friends you see someone else Buy sell buying it or maybe in distribution lad India with where the physical distribution happens the shopkeeper is a key influencer to convince you he's like Bobby G and the shopkeeper said it bab will take it you will take it B will take it how do you convince the shopkeeper margins and I'll come to that it's all incentive driven though I think but your point if you start something new my sense is I think being a shark in a pond is always better than doing something else I don't know whether that's distribution or a niche right if you want to launch an ethnic I wouldn't go against the big guys so you're saying when you're beginning when you're beginning be big fish small pond not small fish in the sea I think so I mean my my read right no I would uh I would obviously that is correct but I would come into a I will come into the market by another route so that's what they have done in a way so you will find a nation enter into the market by a different way that's it so that's the second thing which worked for us because we used no parking boats digital boats posters just in one area so it looked like no parking boats so in in tier two tier three cities there's a No Parking boat which people put on their Bungalows adver to advertise you put in no parking and then up and on up and down of that you have your you have your advertis so we used all of that right then we what we started doing is we St we stood on a transporting place where we like because we wanted to expand out of our city indor so we said this these transport guysa whatever your Raa the loading guard is I'm going to repair it okay I'll repair it for you the the from just from the Aesthetics of it so the Aesthetics in repairment would take us like 1,000 2,000 3,000 bucks but then in exchange I would paint my paint your whole Rika into jadugar so I got like thousands of these rias who would roam around the entire State and then there was a number and people started calling me right so this is what we did we went really really narrow say people who do not consider real estate and considering autoa real estate if they don't consider it a asset today you can convince them to and your product and make it an asset so that's what happened and then so I did that then I left all of it so I left uh 3 months I was still in home I started creating content at home indor in indor and in 3 months I scaled from I had like 50,000 followers already to I scaled from 50 to 300K because I learned patterns of around top 100 brands in the world what they were doing right learned that pattern started creating content reach 300K m got my first brand deal came to Bombay and is there also a learning there for family businesses yeah I mean from day one set expectations right I don't or probably the second wh would be if I was convincing enough probably or I would have stayed enough then things would have gotten sorted so yeah coming like cutting this story so I left came to Bombay started hustling again and there was time where the first money which I got from Brand I put it in like Advanced rent of three months and I was I had like a good house but I didn't have furniture so I was sleeping on floor for a month because I was like brand explain brand new guy has 300,000 followers on social media moves to Bombay how much does a brand pay okay so I I'll tell you brand names and who paid me the first brand deal was ever 70,000 rupees from upgrad that was upfront they paid me they were like put up a story tell our courses are there in digital marketing and content do they paid 70,000 rupees uh that 70,000 gave me money to come to Bombay then while in 10 days I was living in a hotel during those 10 days I got a deal from Ki buers pink insurance and Amazon sellers how I got this I started dming them on Instagram and asked them that hey I can do this this this this started telling them concepts of what I can do with them together these three brands paid me around n lakhs wow that n lakh became my six-month runway in Bombay and they paid you nine for how many sort of like for a long engagement so two to post each and then rights I sold my so I sold my rights to one of these Brands I don't remember which one for 6 months to advertise on my face so that I learned and then it was all cold dming once I did that and then once you start popping up automatically you start doing it one quick lesson if you want to put it out everybody whoever is creating content reach out to B2B Brands more than d2c Brands and I'll tell you why right because platforms when you say B2B B2B is like let's say Amazon or adobe or Google or meta WhatsApp right they pay you way a lot money D Toc brands have no money is that how it works you reach out to Brands not wait for them to come to you now they come to us and still there's a like mix of inbound and outbound in the beginning I used to do the outbound and why B2B Brands work better because there's no one literally promoting them so if you can align your content with what Adobe wants to promote like how would you promote adob right so if you can align your content with that there's a higher chance that you'll get paid versus a d2c brand d2c thinks of performance yeah d2c thinks like Adobe can't do that with you so the influencer medium might be influencing a lot in sales but we'll never truly know because it might not translate into direct exactly that's right that's right I think that's a problem even now I think for everybody who uses influencers right attributability but it's still better than what advertising we used to do that is no doubt at all no so yeah that's the the content I did and then I built I learned few patterns grew from zero to now in 2 years 400 million views a year uh wow give us the top four patterns you learned because that again is something so many people want to okay emulate uh number one there's a format that I follow which is called ECG so do you create five pieces of content which is Evergreen y so that people which is relevant something yesterday it's going to relevant today and that's going to relevant tomorrow so what this going to do is keep your audience engaged topic Okay C is controversial okay so I create three pieces of content which are controversial which are going to reach to masses so that even if it's my Niche I'm going to talk about controversial stuff so let's say even if it's business I'm going to talk about the businesses which tank the things which are going down all of that stuff because that will get me so many views and new audience and then two pieces of content are growth so growth is only growing my core community community so I believe so our why of what we do is to create more leaders and help them become personal Brands so I really love because personal brand has shaped me into who I am so like I want to do that so I create two pieces of content for that Community to help them grow because these are the people who are going to actually become your promoters and this is 53 and two every month 53 and two I do depending on like it can be a month it can be a week it can be whatever I create a Content every day and and does does that help the frequency helps like no there's nothing related to frequency see at the end of the day what you really want to do is there's another one thing quick hack is respect the platform if you want platform to respect you for example you read annual reports and annual announcements of these platforms y Okay Google Facebook what are they focusing on so Facebook will automatically say hey this year we going to promote short content so you know that you're not going to talk about anything else t talked about that we want to increase people's uh average duration per user so it means that the threads will work because how will you do it LinkedIn said that he want to make LinkedIn a fun workplace to be you say threads will work if you write a long tweet that that was I'm telling at that time when I did I don't know what's going right now and what did you say for Instagram Instagram Instagram want to Pro short short content this I when I started I was do this and then LinkedIn said that we want make fun environment workplace to do it fun means everybody was doing text can I do videos Dums and very interesting inside right so whatever the platform wants to promote if you are if your interest are aligned with that they'll push you way faster than anyone else so that was a second thing which I did and then bunch of things the third and the most important thing which I believe people do wrong in Social is they try to make branded content performance content and sharable content together and it's a losing strategy so look at Brands right they would promote these are the five things that we stand for who the yeah like we don't right that if you want to do it do it in like phases like once in a while you're talking about values once in a while you're doing it right now the only thing if you want to grow you should think about how can you make people share more or save more nothing else matters nothing else matters M yeah the engagement likes don't matter views don't matter shares and saves and how do you get people to share so there are different tricks you do it right based on content one of the basic contents is if you're an educational content right pick up your target audience either you attack your target audience or you make them feel smart or you attack them you break their belief system so you'll get polarizing audience but the half of the polarizing audience they share every interesting uh one thing which you can do you can play on relationships right you can take one side of a relationship and make a Content let's say for every girlfriend to share it with the boyfriends every boyfriend to share it with their fathers right like just so you play on that so there are multiple ways you can do it so there's you you just think about how you can make your content share because that's all matters this is incredibly useful everybody starting a brand from 0 to one in today's world also has to build a social media following yeah it's a big Advantage right their own distribution sharing and saving sharing and and dcg no very useful yeah very helpful very valuable very valuable kishor everybody knows already uh he's been here and he's like the original rockar of this particular podcast uh would you like to tell us uh what have you been doing since March and any insights you're seeing in the market since then are you seeing that drop in consumption I was talking about earlier yes we uh we have talking to a lot of people and but I think this year is a what you call adik Mass the Diwali is one month later later correct is one month ahead yeah and unfortunately every marketer follows the calendar month and that's a serious issue in India you should follow the the festival calendar correct correct correct and that's so that's why I think there will be a little bit of mismatch secondly I think inflation might be playing a little bit here and there do you think interest rates have gone to that point where they have started seriously hitting consumption I think the data of fmcg which came in for August was quite disappointing was disappointing it was showing 11 month 11% lower than last month and even uh year to year it was around 1230 % I think that metric is true across the board me and Anan were at a dinner and I was asking one payment Gateway guy one electric vehicle guy I was asking Anand in fashion everybody offline seems to be saying consumption has fallen off in the last two months I don't know how accurate these numbers are but Amazon India grew by just about 5% this year flip cart 7 8% based on higher end electronics and premiumization which seems to be growing but everything seems to be slowing down uh and I was trying to figure out is that it like festivals is there some festivals in interest rate I always believe there are multiple reasons for anything to happen there like fire elements make the planet I think there are multiple Elements which creates the market or makes the market go lower so there are multiple I think interest rate is one of the things festival calendar is another thing thirdly there is a there was a little bit of a fatigue also because after coid the came about and then the fatigue Factor also set in I personally believe uh the inflation has played the I think we are getting formalized as the economy and formal economy is more expensive than a informal economy I think that's playing around a little bit for the first time the formalization is quite complete now yeah and that is that means 18% extra and I think that's a big that's a big is that a big hit this GST component consum it is for Consumer it is consumer it is for one segment of the population maybe not but for the rest of the segment of the population it's how much do you think in India in terms of trade happens offline and how much happens with GST I think the formalization is quite there now I think almost there yeah I don't I think there'll be very few leakages so I mean I just wanted to add I I think by the way on the consumption I'll cover a little bit of the online just my sense by the way is you really accelerated the online adoption and increased consumption for those 12 14 18 months during coid right I think now stabilizing again right so what he's talking even offline is showing offline by the way I think two thoughts that I have I think your point on inflation I think is absolutely true the other is I mean if you do really compress the season it it it's no I have I have another story also to talk about here yeah which will be interesting I I think there are a consumer has a budget I remember a time when mobile phone was just launched and every mobile became a item of fashion and which used to change every six months yeah and that time the money the budget of the the consumer went away from Fashion to mobile phone correct so there are so many new interest which has developed no and also for example Travelers come back I think India consumption in my mind people are spending on experiences in fact even this year I was reading a stat that live shows live concerts and the really fast yeah so what what fmcg product would you add in the experience category I not experience but look at the restaurants business a lot of new restaurant lot of new experien is coming up and everything is getting uh adopted in a way so there are new categories which are emerging I think Health as a focus has been interesting I mean you know for us one interesting thing is we have a peanut butter brand called my fitness I mean I didn't think that peanut butter was that large a category but it's growing like crazy because what's happening is people actually want to the mother feeding the jam sandwich is now saying I want to do something healthier for the child the vegetarian who's working out by the way wants to sort of have some protein so it's interesting so there's consumption shifting into more healthy eating for example right and that by the way there's no growth slowdown right so I think your point of budget getting resplit into various other parts of consumption I think is probably one of the biggest reasons also there yeah any other Trends you're noticing in the last 3 four months the trend which is definitely emerging or which is being disc discussed is how lot of new digital brands are shaping up mhm and uh there's a new story which everybody is coming out with and uh story is building that brand yeah so that's what something which we are observing and we believe that's another opportunity because it's catering to one segment of the population and that population has lot of disposable income and they are experimenting with lots and lots of things yeah so me and Kish were on a call recently he was sharing his insight on can I say demographic geographical insights yeah should we go through that entire thing just so that people can learn from it no I was presenting something which was saying that uh that 30 30 30 million what call three CR households in this country okay are basically contributing to 60% of India's consumption and uh I was talking about value added consumption and in terms of value and within that CR or 30 million families y there is a Singapore which is let's say 60 lakh people they're exactly consuming like that we are behaving like that yeah then there is a Poland which is another two and a half three CR people interesting very similar GDP similar per capita and then there is Mexico which is around 78 CR people you want to talk about India 1 India 2 the distinction no that theory we did speak about last time also and uh but I think this you've gone like a little bit in depth right yeah we've gone quite a lot in depth and I believe uh that the rest of India which is the balance India which is Singapore Poland and Mexico they are like subsaharan numbers 1100 per capita yeah and uh and the valued consumption we don't see valued consumption in this large group which is nearly 13 million people 1.3 million so so the consumption which is happening which is value added and a much smaller group it's a much smaller group maybe around 10 12 CR people Y and this 10 12 CR people can be represented as what I say India one India one is anybody who has domestic help they don't do some interesting things on their own and then there is India 2 which helps you to lead a better life the drivers the helpers the pr the maids The Watchmen the liftman and they are huge in numbers for every one India one there are three three and a half India twos and then there is India 3 which is the farm laborers they make their ends meet and they are on government Aid so where will the consumption ultimately happen and where will the value added consumption happen because the economy has to grow the value added consumption has to grow and India has been created in a different our societies have been built in a very different way where in the consumption is more by people who have reached somewhere M and we don't give enough money to India to to make them but is India one growing quite fast it's not growing so fast okay which is growing fastest India one two or three I think uh it's I would say India one is only growing maybe maybe a percentage a year maybe less than that in terms of consumption no 1% adding up to that that four and India too India to is growing because India 3 is people coming to India 2 always they're the larger Chunk in any case so you're seeing the middle class is getting bigger I don't know middle class is defined by income groups and all in India income groups don't uh you know can I add something on India one India India 3 because I've been spending a lot of time on that because I read it and it happened in India before right I I still stick to that yeah so I believe like India 1 India 2 India 3 definitely has to do a lot with income but it also has to do with awareness and choices so I'll give you an example India one India 2 India 3 just just like you know divide put them for lack of better customer One customer two customer three they all exist in same house with same income group as well and I'll tell you why okay explain same how same income so I I'll give you let's say me my brother my father okay my father would use one soap he'll do one product right he's using less products just 50 to 200 product y I would do a face wash a shampoo and a body wash my brother would do a shampoo a conditioner a face wash a scrub or like the 10 things right right so he's India one who's using like 10,000 product all you all three are India one yeah so no I'm saying that customer One customer 2 customer 3 like comparatively my father would use only 25 to 30 products around it yeah he's consuming less number of items or skus as we call it yeah so that's exactly but ultimately you'll come in that same family of India one no but Kish your point is by the way there is call it U see I think one is the number of customers which is you're saying call it 100 110 120 million roughly right that's what you're saying if you assume four four people per family 120 million roughly so the second by the way is maybe the number let's just take that number for a minute the consumption of those 100 122 million I think the point Raj is trying to make is it continues to increase yes yeah it is increasing there's no debate very low percentage but that no that consumption of this 12 CR people is close to 800 billion plus no I feel people who have is that number going up the consumption that's going up for this India one the consumption is going up but then why are not reflecting in say Amazon flipart it's reflecting no but uh see I don't think you can take one quarter worth of data and generalize this alone I mean and you can't yeah how much do you think it's going up by percentage wise you said 800 billion I I think it's growing a lot on this India W you say upward of 20 30% maybe an excess of 10% for sure do you think it's growing because of increasing consumption or premiumization is the volume growing or is the it's price point GR discretionary income and uh they have Surplus incomes and they have to spend that money like in his family like the next generation is consuming more than the previous generation and it is both I think for sure there's premiumization but I also think people buy more things yeah yeah yeah right I mean you just end up buying more things right we did some analysis we did some analysis an was India one consumes close to 100,000 items in their lifetime MH India 2 is maybe 10 ,000 in India 3 is, and would you like to list the top items I know you have it in your research where does India one spend the most money I think I think there lifestyle food but I think the look at the kind of food is which is getting consumed today by India one I would say the Singapore and the Poland side I think they have prized to a great great extent from asparagas to avocados to health food everybody is consuming every family member is consuming a different kind of breakfast and different kind of food I think going out again by India one which is Poland and Singapore is significant even Mexico in a way so how would you categorize income ranges of Singapore Poland you know Singapore would be I would say more than uh a Family household income of 30 40 lakhs plus and what percentage of that will be a small I would say no this will be around 60 lakh plus yeah and I mean Singapore income will be closer to 100 120k I mean so it's it's you are closer to like a yeah 90 lakhs 90 laks CR but and the Poland would be in excess of 2025 LS and Mexico would be much little lesser than that yes maybe around 12 laks 125 majority of India one is in Mexico right majority is in Mexico around 8 crores another research which we found out was the total package good consumption in India atcg package good in value terms is 70% of exess is by this India one M beauty close to 85% yeah and uh eating out in restaurants close to 78% so it's significant in high 50s 60 fruits 65 70% yeah yeah but I I would say going back to you know you talking about brand building right I mean 120 million is still a very large number a huge number right still but I'm guessing for anyone planning to build a Brand 0 to one has to focus on that 120 million yeah I think on a much narrower piece you want a margin of more than 40 to 60% correct correct correct I have yeah I have I've now met some 800 900 of these Founders right 832 I think is the exact number but um I think there's a clear pattern on what works and what doesn't work for the first 20 crores of are there any other insights here like out of this 120 million how many of them prefer paying through UPI credit card cash what percentage may be online versus offline this 100 million will all be online also online I I think my sense is by the way they may not do all their purchases online but they will 100% be online they would have experienced online definitely they would have experienced online definitely so they have a credit card or UPI 100% would be by more likely UPI than cred UPI more than credit credit card also three CR users three and half CR users in this country so they will all come here and are these users this 120 concentrated in between the metropolitan cities oh no I would say the top 100 cities significantly significant top 100 right not Metro I mean like very large as a spread how how much do you think will be in the Metros cuz I'm trying to think of someone buing 60% plus so if you open 10 stores have a online thing distribution in 10 cities you cater to 60% of the 120 million yeah for the value added consumption where the margins are higher explain what is value value value added is how much value you adding if you are creating buying a buying a product or making a product at one rupee at what multiple you are are selling it it has to be an excess of three times that Val of creating a brand yeah then you are creating a brand by the way one slight thing on the same topic I think I it was quite interesting for me if you take the top 100 cities at least in the e-commerce world the outside Metro cities I don't know the exact split is growing much much faster but it will be growing but you have to see the value of the merchandise which you are selling I believe India is all about per kilo realization whether it's a garment whether it's a towel whether it's a mg product or whether it's a detergent it's a per killo realization of something and where where you can reach yeah no the reason I'm saying is when we launched I mean at least in mintra when you launch premium products was quite interesting Always by the way the places that didn't have the malls but in the top 100 cities would sell the most I mean Polo Ral Lauren when we launched would sell in like Nell and CH yeah but it would sell but how many people from that City actually if you add up all of them all the cities put together but add up for a particular City there is a store in Bombay Ares so which the most popular brand of the world 60 people account for 80% of the business and that's among the top few stores of hers in the world how much do account for and they're typically Bombay based they are I don't know I don't buy anything from them no so I'll tell you what in the last yourself or for friends like I'll tell you in the last 3 four years yeah I've completely stopped buying from Ultra Luxury Brands like heres and LV and all that because I feel they play you their entire marketing strategy seems to be to offend and get some kind of a reaction out of you and then buy from them like you know they'll tell you n has Achi Nana no more of the you you know that is that is the most offensive thing like to go to a shop where they're marking up a product one is to A Thousand Times yeah yeah and then saying you can't buy this product until you build a relationship with us get on a list do all of these hoops that you have to jump through it's not because they can't manufacture more of that they can go make a million of those bags and stuff but that strategy of being arrogant has worked so well for them that I think people have to be cognizant to that and you know kind of like so nikel in early days like big Bazar was created on three things greed fear and uh we used to call it uh altruism to a certain extent the brand can be built on this greed is that it is available at a lower price fear is that it won't be available after a while yeah yeah and secondly all the brands are built on appealing to your ego and vanity how does big Bazar do it for example like a budget Supermarket distinguish themselves from a Hermes or Herms or however you call it like what is the differentiation what part of ego are you going after and what are and fear and they are going after your ego and vanity yeah I think all fancy shopping is based on manipulation I feel when you go buy a BMW for example it has very little to do with how the car truly feels but it is the perception subconsciously sold to you that a certain kind of person drives this kind of a car of of course because in isolation if we were not to be social beings yeah if you had a BM you at home after one week you're not going to go look at it admire it and drive it and be like wow this is amazing correct any car you'll get bored of right it's like everything else in life but I think that marketing messaging right like what BMW has created yeah they've forgotten the car for a second driving machine this per this person who you aspire to drives this car I think we have to figure out how to help people who are building Brand 0 to one build what BMW buil in a different manner for a different world I think Raj will have some insights there because he's kind of building that bridge with House Effect so I'll tell you it's not only luxury Brands I think this also Mass brands do every brand does the same thing they try to play on showing you an ideal image of somebody you will become like the classic examples in India I could give is the complete man M like you know thank you like the complete man what they would do is hey a man if you want to be a complete man you would wear this an ideal situation that's trying to sell so they always do that it's it doesn't go with luxury it goes with every everywhere in fact it goes with kids as well like I'm a complain girl I'm a complain boy everybody they got a reason to do this right so at the end of the day you want to tell stories and that's how you sell and one of the classic examples is you sell an ideal State who you are not so by the way always new in it there's nothing new in it and in fact one of the big like what I what I believe in is so let's say luxury Brands don't want to sell it to people who have money they want to sell it to people who don't have money and the reason is that like that's that's how they are able to build their brands in that way so they want to sell it to like you're not the ideal TG n no but that's but you know they want to sell it to someone who will save for this LV back for months and then come out but that's not happening India yet yeah no it no it's still there in I think it's happened in China a lot of other countries the us maybe us not in India at least I can tell you that I don't have any data but my experience amongst my friends people are saving up for the cars which they want to show off people are saving up for the watches they want to show and the biggest thing that is happening is shoes sneakers sneakers just started happening yes yeah so the people are yet not not for handbags not for clothes yet maybe but but yours are girls are saving for handbags like a lot of my friends and I can name 20 at least I not more than that but 20 who've been saving to buy an LV bag on their birthday or like a Gucci interesting we are out of touch yeah because so our generation people do save up to buy this and in fact surprising are like boyfriends and girlfriends save up to GI to their the partners right this this is and it's happening and a lot of people can relate to it because we do safe somebody was telling me 70% of iPhones in India are bought on credit do you think that's true for bags and sneakers as well are people borrowing to buy these things I don't know about bag specifically sneakers I know there are a lot of people who do Buy on credits there's a monthly payment system with retailers there are in fact a lot of my friends what they started doing isday like you know have friend peerto peer lending and then they would buy something expensive to show it off and then do it like that's by the way I think it's the first the so there's a product called bnpl byy now pay bmpl is among the fastest growing in all e-commerce fmms is that important like if you're building a brand from zero to one if you just figured out a niche you started building a consumer brand there how do you integrate bnpl you're a new company you're starting at zero uh I think by the way BNL gets automatically integrated as you think about e-commerce or even your own website your platform is killed then do people come and approach you or from the very beginning you can from Z right I you do that with your credit card company or you can do it with your you know you can do it with your payment Gateway there are so once you have a payment Gateway and some data there are multiple firms that allow you uh buy now pay later facilities obviously by the way the flip carts the Amazon of the world all have inbuilt programs that are quite large but even if you're a d2c website you can get BP buy now pay do they share a part of the carry on the interest they charge with the platform of course of course and what is the rate of interest typically I think it's high I don't remember the date off the top of my head uh the interest of the top it be 20 plus for sure be 20 plus for sure right and uh very specifically because we're talking about this particular influencer Le sales world now Beyond these LV and all of that what is quiet luxury why what part of someone's psychology is making them buy something for a crazy price while it should not look like it is expensive ensive what is working there anyone can answer that cuz I've read about this that show is there now I think quite luxury in India is not yet a big of a concept there are there are C like there are but it'll be a TG which is I mean no but it's still interesting if it's working conscious capitalism yeah so I I would say Nel firstly by the way my sens is um I I think the market in India for I think we're not yet evolved to a stage of restrained capital where you don't want to actually demonstrate that you bought something expensive I think that market is very very very small but I think the people who have arrived in life and they don't need to prove anything to anybody can easily move there but then why are they spending so much like my point my question is I buy no but for example do you think a Pak is quite luxury I'm just you know in my mind you know would that be because you can't see it right depends on which model if you don't buy a complication you buy like a regular one if you buy like a nautilus or something it is not quite luxury because it's evidently an expensive watch that a lot of people know about if you buy a pek constellation or a grandm chime or something but I think regardless of that I'm trying to figure out why somebody's paying $1,000 to buy a t-shirt which looks like a $100 t-shirt $50 so I tell you okay so this is what my belief is this is nothing to do with data but like a psychology which seen people right yeah so all of us and everyone we all do things to Signal something okay so signaling value for everyone is high yes some people do signaling through just appearance some people do that by doing certain amount of deeds and some people do it by stories so for example you want to talk about let's say an expensive watch in your hand which a large majority of people can't see or understand right but you want to share that with your friends or the five people who care about because they'll ask you so you get your signaling value by stories and that's quite luxury so a quite luxury group will be able to spot on a t-shirt which is really expensive but it just looks like a normal t-shirt so you want to signal that particular value so it just depends on as human being who do you want to signal to so it's bragging value amongst your immediate who do you want like who do you care about signaling and it's a very small community in this very well said I would say like I don't wear a watch nor a ring yeah nothing I don't show any brand on my clothes ever maybe that's the personality you want to show because that's a signaling value I actually really I also thought it was quite insightful I think signaling is the key sort of in this so Bas so this message of what you want to signal is it authentic and organically personality type which determines what you want to Signal or is it what is cool in society at that point of time is that a manipulation too I genuinely believe it goes on three steps okay first is because you just want to become cool amongst your peers so whatever is trending you want to do that that's certain level of signaling once you're done with that then it goes with your preferences and choices and then third is to you to achieve objectives that you want to achieve so first example is like if I am let's say a 50,000 rupe to one lak rupe income person I want to buy a really expensive shoe to show off my friends because that's the physical value because like this is cool this new Jordan is becoming cool I want to show that because it's trending I want to show that once I reach like an upper level of income or whatever maybe a taste go go with all the brackets it's just interesting okay one to five lakh person per month income and then when I reach I feel this stays on with different products till a CR yeah and then after a CR one one to one CR one to one CR like 50,000 to one CR this is just different the things keeps changing today you might just show off like a small watch tomorrow show like big car till one CR it goes there after like a CR to couple of CR I don't know that bracket I'm just making it up I'm just telling because of PE I can I can spot people who I can think of but not the income so this is the second group they go with preferences and choices okay like I want to show signal that I am health conscious person I am a notd branded person I prefer that I am environmentally uh friendly so that's that's why there's beo here like you know this is just the signaling value which you want to just put it out people that these are my preference and choices this is what I stand for and the third level which I go for which is which I've seen like Ultra rich people have had like few encounters with people they show off a certain level of image for a certain objective and they want to do that signaling because they larger purposes around that explain so somebody would not be really really let's say show off with Brands and stuff yeah because they don't want other people to think that they are the Branded stuff they want to be like hey I have money but I don't want you to see that I have this money then the signaling value can be somebody does like a great charity doesn't speak about it sure and want to hear it from other people that oh he did that she did that right he doesn't want to talk about it she doesn't want to talk about it because that's a signaling value that I want to put out that for your larger purpose you want people to think that you are too much into charity that's why you don't talk about it because if you talk about it you technically come down to below level number so nikil it's a very basic human trait that everybody is Yugo and vanity has to be massaged in some way correct Agreed 100% correct it can be done in a reverse way and it can be done in a absolutely opposite way yeah I I think the interesting part here is how people evolve to figure out what their signaling mechanism is and what they want to signal and is there a Insight from them from that category to build a brand to these people CU these are things you can utilize yeah content you consume and people you hang out with large majority of influence happens with that see I think Community to Brand building is the next big thing in my view I think that elaborate on that yeah so uh at least in the online world I again right I think my my view is look uh I mean there are a ton of influencers and I think no there's M to sitting here uh but I'm saying it is uh after a point it's not about some influencer coming in telling it is about what your friends and your community that you trust sort of feel I'll give you an example we have a again gardening like random right but gardening is very Community Based because you exchange steps you you think about why plans die and you know what do you need to do and so on right and so having influencer based marketing sometimes may or may not work y but actually if you have a closed Facebook group and there are many many many Facebook like insta groups Etc where people genuinely actually talk about about what their problems are and in those if you start to infiltrate and say the brand comes organically that's a very different way of building a brand true right and I think it's a very organic always on way of building a brand and I think there are interesting involved categories where this community based brand building is starting to be quite interesting right and I think it's very sustainable it's less expensive it takes longer to build but it's much more sustainable I'll add on to that that's exactly what we're trying trying to accomplish with house effects right that's bang on we're not doing influencer Le marketing we do attention and community-led marketing because here's what I believe in content builds community community brings culture and culture changes the way you buy that's exactly the pattern that you exctly so that's why you need a Content person who can create such a content on such a niche who can create a community around it how important is it for somebody starting brand 0o to one to be able to create content and create Community I think that's the way forward and I tell you a logical reason behind it the the biggest reason but I feel is point of sale every time the majority of influence happens on point of sale okay there's obviously different part digital Discovery different different percentage but the large majority happens on the point of sale so earlier the point of sale used to happen on kirana stores okay wherever so there would be so think about did in a random day I ran out of my toothpaste I use Colgate I go to my Kira store and there's no Colgate available he's like by I'll buy closeup and get home that's point of sale I'm influenced if I like the flavor done I'm never using goldgate again okay so that's used to be the old way of doing it the second wave which I think we're going through right now was retail in marketplaces where you go in search of something and you get convinced to buy something as well that is big Bazar way Amazon way or all the places where you explore certain things right so that's where the point of sale used to happen now where the point of sale is the influence is happening on right there on the content so you're exploring Instagram every day you're seeing or YouTube right now you're seeing hey this person is using this mixer he clicks it then in there Instagram autofills your information and then you can check out depending on your income level yeah you can just check out somebody buy like a 50 rupe or 100 rupee product there right in right off the bat somebody would buy like a 10,000 12,000 or 10 lak rupe product right off the bat but the point of sale is changing and because the point of sale is constantly changing because the content we consume I think that's why people need to build content L communities in order to go ahead now does that mean that the kirana and the marketplaces and online's going to die not not at all did with marketplaces Kira died no so every time a new layer gets add on you just have to capitalize on all three but I think there's an interesting play that you can start building Community or Creator Le uh Commerce and start making products there and then eventually once you have enough money you can play on other platforms so I I just had one question actually and then a comment I think the comment is I fully agree on the brand building through Community I think the question I had actually was when you're in a mind state of consuming content many times you don't transact because you're not you're not going to buy I mean when you're reading an article you're not necessarily in the mood to buy the reason marketplaces like mintra Amazon flipcart Etc workers you go in with an intent to shop right there's a Commerce intent have you seen are you seeing that change where people are actually buying more because insta shopping hasn't really taken off globally right in any meaningful manner I mean at the Instagram level I'm saying but streaming in China has see that's the only exception that I can think of right and that is also by the way shopping Le streaming because he so his point is bang on that when you go with the mindset of consuming content do you shop or no so live streaming and social commers is working biggest people go with the mindset that I want buy I'm going to get a great deal I'm going to buy that's the mindset they're going with okay can I ask you a question if you're shooting this podcast yeah and say we're shooting this show 3 years from now if somebody likes the shirt you're wearing they just click it and it'll get bought in a second you think the world will go there I by the way I mean you know never say never but my sense is I think that will still be a very small percent because I think human beings are still human beings right now or later and I think by the way if you're watching something on content right you're trying to learn how to build a brand yeah right and I think that's what you're really focused on you're not focused particularly on shopping now will some percentage convert of course they will but can you do brand building that way 100% I agree with the community point which is what we originally spoke about and the brand building through Community I think that will happen for sure so here was I was I want to complete that Loop that when people go on to consume content right I think it's very difficult for us to decide if I am today in a mood to buy or no yeah so because mostly majority of time of younger people of gener everybody in fact now is spent on consuming content through different means either by YouTube Instagram social media platform anything you don't actually know whether you're in mood to buy or no you don't know it's a first day of salary or it's a last day of salary it's just you're in a hope that okay I'm going to create content so I was talking about three C's right conversation convincing and then conversion all three can happen just there I can have a conversation the brand building gets the brand gets built that I'm talking about hey this t-shirt is amazing and we talk about I can do little convincing where we can talk about quite luxury and stuff like that and then someday there'll be technology where you can directly buy and convert there'll be small percentage of conversion but large percentage of convincing and a larger percentage of conversation start see I have I think great framing I think only tweak I would add to it is I think there are categories that are inspiration and browse Le and there are categories that are functional right just broadly yeah if you think about browse categories where you need to be in nobody needs to buy three shirts or two dresses I mean you don't right you buy because you're inspired to buy because something yeah see the the whole point of this right this is like a charity project like I keep saying this every year you want people to learn something I want people who want to build a brand today young guys 0o to one to learn everything they might need okay from all of your experiences sure like I don't mean like 20% of it 30% of it we want to teach them 100% got it cuz eventually we need more brands in India which are going to scale which are Indian Le Indian owned all of that yeah true so I think next section we'll take a one minute break no but are you going to give us food at some point or no food yeah yeah [Music] food hey guys ready should be so I think the question was starting um just getting started right and I think my perspective comes from sort of talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs who have sort of built businesses call it between 0 and 25 30 crores were the people that I initially spoke to to try and get there I think there are some patterns on what you need to do um and I think the break points for me are 0 to 20 20 to 100 100 to 500 and 500 and above right in terms of net revenue we're talking about cres crores so in the first 0 to 20 crores in my mind I think it is all product driven Word of Mouth driven community that we talked about in content driven but it is not Performance Marketing driven it you should have great reviews you should have great repeat rates you should have great social media following you should be part of a community right I think if you can build it that way you're building it in a very healthy manner the so the product quality is probably the most important thing in my mind to get right followed by content and Community followed by distribution strategy I think you talked about distribution strategy I think for from the 0 to 20 crores if you can keep an 80 20% where 80% is e-commerce platforms and 20% is DDC it's a great mix because then you have enough consumer data but you also have reach right that you can actually get to so my theory is if you can get the first 20 crores this way it's like a very healthy way to grow if you're going to start a brand but I don't agree at one place 80% Marketplace marketpl is very difficult to build a brand and talk about the brand you get the top line yes no but yes and no I think it depends on what the platform is I think for example if you can actually take part in a program within an Amazon or a mintra I think you can actually get to Showcase it I'm saying look it's the easiest way to I think there are ways to grow that show in my view I think for example if you are a d2c star program and you can actually sort out an interesting deal in uh mintra it's a great way to grow because you have a brand page you're able to represent it right but they you are representing a brand in the way they want you to represent that's the challenge uh yes I think within some constraints for sure but I still think by the way it gives you see for me I'm not trying to fully do brand building yet I'm trying to make sure there's product Market fit and make sure that this see if you're a new person starting off what do you need you need to you need to sort of get to some scale MH if you need external funding you need to be able to get external funding and you need to start having enough Runway for you to be able to build from the 20 to 100 right so for me just very practically right if you focus 100% on d2c for example I think you can represent the brand but you'll end up bleeding money which means by the way you'll have to raise money much sooner right um I personally believe a little bit differently I believe if the brand is not right the packaging is not right the color is not right there are color codes there is brand codes for everything and if you don't get it right nothing will go right I by the way think is sure the opposite I think there are lots of bad brands that get sold through Performance Marketing no it's not about just give me one minute right just to complete this right so I can tell you 50 brands in mintra that basically grew on subsidy right which is either you threw a discount at it or you thre a Performance Marketing at it but it can't sustain Beyond a certain number because repeats don't come very right so I'm saying the first 20 CR may get a consumer right right I'm not talking I'm talking overall if you don't get the brand right because I personally believe brand is like making a spaceship yeah people take it very lightly every because brand has to communicate a lot it has to emote with you it has to talk to you and if that is not correct a great product also can't do anything but I'll tell you by the way just one thing I think having a great brand View and not a great product product has to be right right no I'm saying you have still a chance to correct the brand from 20 to 100 if you have to take a chance it will not work you will not reach 20 crores I think you can right so uh give us an example yeah so and the brand was not right and the product was great and it no I I'll give you an example right I think uh Dennis lingo which is a brand of ours wasn't particularly built as a brand it was a 20 CR odd brand but it works in India we started a brand called John Miller people accepted it as American brand by the way did right I think same thing you used it but say but you thought there but there is a brand thought there no I think there is a brand thought there but I'm saying the first see the most limited time when you want to start something is your time my question is about the name somebody thought about the brand there was a work done there of course of course that I'm not disagreeing with K there has be some if you don't get the brand right nothing goes right that's my theory we have seen it all I have a different Theory we may not have to agree on it right but my different Theory by the way is that I think it is important to be consistent it is important to have great product quality but I don't think you need the complete brand definition because I think a brand can continue to evolve from 20 to 100 cour as well right just different Theory right and it'll be interesting to sort of debate out because I can give you multiple examples of companies where if you don't get the product right and there's a lot of focus on brand building you know getting the Brand Story the brand book right you spend on brand book and brand doesn't make a brand yeah anyway I think uh yeah we we are saying the same thing but uh coming from a different way maybe coming from a different point of view can I digress you a little bit sure so many large brands in India yeah from Louis Phil to Peter England to a certain extent jockey y jocky might be a franchise but the others yeah we put foreign models yeah on a brand that has nothing to do with anything outside of India yeah and call them names like you know like John whatever and Peter whatever and whatever yes it worked for a long time yeah will it work I don't think so I mean I think it uh so for example we have a brand called kagiri and it's working working just as well and it's but that's ethnic um the um you know if you can find the right name that actually see you're wearing Western Wear some level why is it that a Peter England or an alen Solly has some appeal right it connotes of Western Wear I mean so at some level you know I agree with you Kish right saying ethnic wear is ethnic but I'm saying Western where is Western right I mean at some level the reverse is also true right so but you're I I have an interesting anecdote on the color of the models so I think it's changing but one of the things for example if you go to a MRA you find that everybody is fair skinned right white to do this and we ran an experiment where you actually look at click-through rates long time ago and you find that the click-through rates are actually different so purely economically the clickthrough rates on Performance Marketing were higher now I think that was 15 years ago oh sorry that was 5 seven years ago elaborate your think when you had a white as a model yeah your click through was higher yeah the click was higher this was seven eight years ago why I don't know I think maybe belief system it's a belief system maybe it's a mindset right as we sort of think about maybe people think it's more premium I don't know but I think there is some instinctive is some kind of colonial baggage that we believe that Western Products are better than Indian see yeah I think for sure there is but you know look I mean I'm not a big into Theory right but the facts are the following the clickthrough rates on one were better than the other right I mean and that was a fact and I think will it change I think the answer is it will but it'll be slow progression it's not going to change overnight right so going a little has it changed if I were to be building a brand of t-shirts today yeah should I call it John Jacob and get some white South Serbian models to look like American models on the campaign I don't yeah so I think it's a good question MRA does it very well it does it does so I think the brand name I agree a little bit with Kish I think you have to think through it carefully and thoughtfully I think the name has to mean something and it has to be a there has see people don't remember facts n people remember stories I think we spoke about this slightly earlier so the brand name has to have a brand story associated with it it may not be fully crafted but you need you need a germ of an idea right in terms of what that is and that needs to be consistent will I launch a t-shirt brand with a with a western sounding name possible possible but you have to think through it I'll tell you I'll I want to add on this right it definitely works more like we've seen examples after examples yeah but I think now that you can change that with content and Community again the reason why I'm saying this is every time you buy a brand you need to feel proud so if you can make people feel proud in an Indian brand they'll buy it in a Serbian brand they'll buy it something from gree coming from a buy is this you need to find out your people who can actually find you worthy enough and they can be proud in buying your things now why does this now why does this Fair skinn foreign looking model and foreign names work because it's not just you who's making that Community proud there are 500 other brands also trying to do it so that's why it just works better because there are 500 people trying to make this look really good explain explain so example let's say Peter England is trying the same thing John Jacobs is trying to tr John Miller is trying to do the same thing Dennis lingo is trying to do the same I'm just giving example sure mintra there are 20 more people apart from you who are showing this as a premium brand that's why the Consolidated money just grows up there and makes you feel more upgraded and premium versus you individually just pushing it but can you individually do it yes the biggest community and content L example is Baba ramdev right you can sell that you can do it and make it super Indian and actually do it that's the biggest Creator Le story in India that has happened okay I'm going to reframe reframe my question baring content in community neither of which I have I want to start a t-shirt brand today yeah where I'm going to put some print on the t-shirt which is in English what is the path of least resistance where do I have the most Al so firstly by the way sorry sorry I just had a slightly different framing of this right if I want to start a brand today I don't know by the way unless there's something reasonably unique about the t-shirt brand with some meaning that I want to start whether I would start a t-shirt brand really good quality yeah it's too generic and too General right I think so the the first thing to do is you know how crowded is the space how large is the space and do I have a unique value proposition so for example I won't run one more ethnic brand t-shirt brand how how does someone learn that if I'm thinking of t-shirt yeah how do I learn how crowded is the space I think the easiest way actually and the most practical way is to go search for t-shirts on MRA and find how how many choices and how many Brands you have it's a representation of the market you category you have it for a lot of categories but I'm saying you know some categories are low ASP and huge variety what is ASP uh average selling price right so low ASP products with high high competition is not something that I would go and do a brand in see if you want to launch something right so the first you 20 the question is focus we spoke about this earlier also focus on something which is a niche be a shark in a p right for the for this so that you can actually differentiate in some meaningful manner at least for the first 20 crores y right just to complete my framing since it's taking a little bit of time the 20 to 100 CR in my mind the skill especially if you're doing it online has to be around most efficient Performance Marketing most efficient use of community for brand building so that you don't spend a lot of money on brand building but you build it organically how would you do that the more content that gets which trans which travels and more people that get eyeballs without you paying Google tax and Facebook tax how do you do that it's viral content it's around continuously putting out content it's around creating a community it's is that the key then today to build a brand is it content in community not just for influencer Le brand but all brands I think it is a large part of it but it is not the only part of it I think it's a big part of brand building between 20 and 100 crores because it's a less it's a more so again I'll give you an example for us we do a lot of our brand building through men's XP and Ida it doesn't cost us we own the content platforms for the 20 to 100 cres it's most effective way to do it because you spend 1 2% of your Revenue as opposed to 4 5% of your revenue and you get to the same kind of reach right and and that is an easier and more cost-effective way of doing it I think the hard part and the boring part especially if you're more online offline also I think we I'm sure you'll have added points on the online side knowing how to do growth hacking or Performance Marketing on Amazon flip cart mintra Google Facebook is a core skill between 20 and 100 gr can you tell me what is growth hacking yeah so in an offline space your shelf space and your location matters yes where your placed matters in the online world the first six swipes on a mobile phone are the only thing that matter after that by the way your attention span you know you never get reach right so you search for trousers right you find you find a bunch of trousers you swipe the phone six times the first six pages matter now the first six pages you can get to by two ways one is by paying Amazon flip cart mintra Nika Etc a lot of money which is you pay for it and you get a slot right does it cost uh I think it varies by category few hundred rupees for t-shirt for for an SKU so just think about it a t-shirt sells for call it $3.99 right you may end up paying 30% 100 rupees for a for Performance Marketing and getting a slot so it's quite expensive to do so what is growth hacking how do you get to those spots without paying for it and how do you do it do you think 100 bucks per click see by the way the cost per click will be less the cost per click for an average t-shirt will probably be in the 30 40 range but you'll need to sort of do Performance Marketing for a long period of time you have to stay there for a long period of time right and the conversions are not that high so there's cost per click and there's cost per conversion right and there's a long drop between the two just because since you're the platform guy here give me like three specific hacks which can bring down this cost for me who started a new t-shirt brand very simple you have to find out it's a little bit like what Raj said you have to find out what each platform values mintra values freshness mintra values fresh stock so new Styles coming on all the time therefore if you want to make minra your primary platform you basically have to introduce more frequent drops and you have to get tagged to what's new it's a it's an easy hack right so you valid expain tag towards new let me give an easier examples because mintra is the more complicated one um Amazon values consumer reviews and ratings yeah so getting the first 100 reviews and ratings right through customers through friends through family all legitimately there's an Amazon wine program that you can do all of that actually matters the most for you to be placed on so do you manufacture these ratings you don't manufacture them you actually by the way make it happen through uh Amazon has a program where basically people give honest reviews but you can pay Amazon for a review right so there's no problem whatever the review is the review is If the product is good quality you can actually do it I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it outside but I'm saying the the the legitimate way to do it is Amazon has a Vine Program which is very very cost effective B right where you can basically sort of get get the first 100 reviews or 100 ratings to get I'm a t-shirt company I figured out some co-packer who makes t-shirts I want to print something on it I printed it yep I go to Amazon yeah how how does the listing happen like how do you get it listed on Amazon yeah so I think this is like getting back to very 101 but I think the first thing is you have to register as a seller okay which is a little bit of a process Amazon is very easy and self Ser very Democratic flip cart and mintra are very hard uh just because it's need to register as a seller you just need a GST number a company right there's nothing that's needed so you need a private limited company you don't need private propr as well yeah you can do a proprietorship most companies a lot of companies sellers are actually proprietor by way so uh it's very easy on an Amazon little less easy on flip cart harder on mintra harder on AO I think in that order right as far as fashion because Amazon is the most self- serve of the lot which is you don't need to talk to a person in order to make this happen right in most other platforms you have to talk to somebody and that takes time effort and convincing I'm sorry sorry I'm going back a step but if I have an idea of how I how a t-shirt should look how do I find the right manufacturer for it so um I mean there are many ways you can do it but but how do I find a good one yeah so there is a list of maybe 500 man so firstly by the way it depends on your auto quantity I think depending on every size there are people who can actually manufacture it for you t-shirt by the way no T-shirt is you go trur and you walk around and you can get t-shirt manufacturers online India Mart to India and you can find a manufacturer right the quality is definitely not at bar but you can get like a sense of what you can do yeah so Nik by the way sorry maybe taking even more of a step back right you know I think brand building requires a little bit of thinking and effort right you can't come and suddenly say so for example if you want to go start a t-shirt brand I think it's actually quite difficult to do because you need some level of expertise you do need to understand something about t-shirt manufacturing and so on there has to be some you can't I mean it's like meat right as opposed to you know you can't just do starter right I mean in my how do you inculcate that learning okay so I was can I add something to this please please how to start a brand thing because I think I've started a lot of it and failed at multiple times so and I've done this trading buying from indiia Mar and selling on Amazon I've done this like as a side hustle for longest time right say that again so I used to what I used to do I used to buy from indiaart and sell it on Amazon okay so there was no brand nothing I saw that the mops were growing in India the Thousand rupee mop I don't know if you seen this yeah yeah right that I don't know how to explain like that's the one which sucks up the right so I saw that that was there's another bucket where you squeeze it in so you can go on indiamart from Gujarat you can get somebody to give give you that 200 to 300 rupees you call it and then you list it on Amazon you sell it for 1,000 rupees and then commission amission cut you get like 100 150 rupes per how much commission does Amazon charge so it depends on different categories different but and there's so many you know that's Amazon's I think the biggest problem that there's there's no exact transparency on everything on commission basis because there is definite 22% is somewhat which you end up P by the way lowest is 15 highest is 35 right depending on but you keep like it's that is something which you face problem if you're starting out and that's problem so I used to do this I used to sell vegetable Choppers I ended up making 10 lak Rupees as profit of vegetable Choppers uh because I bought a 50 rupees sold for 400 this I used to do on Amazon so I'll tell you in this thing which I learned about how to start a brand there are two definite questions that you got to ask yourself first is what is your strength some people strength might be getting products in cheap because right if you can't buy it in cheap you can't sell it so if your strength is not negotiating and buying and have a control over sourc you can't do that so let's say that's not your strength yeah then is your strength building content Community something like that then you do that what if my strength is designed so let's say yeah I'm coming to that let's say you design that's a product differentiator okay so now that's your strength y so do you have I think there are three type of strengths one is brand building and content second is sourcing and third is unique Innovation and design and everything of that and the fourth is your ability to some people have a dramatically better ability to growth hack Amazon grow flip cart I was going to that is that such a big distinction I think yeah yeah absolutely in this I think for sure for even in the old world if I have connection yeah the entry and the shell space and the yes exactly so even in the old world if I have connections with big Bazar or dmart I can probably like get listed and start selling much faster than anyone else so that used to happen how does someone build this I find more interesting than the rest how does someone build the knowledge of these growth hacks hire someone who has that knowledge I think U can I just take that maybe you can uh add to it right so uh Amazon is the most straightforward to become more expert on because I think there is lots of case law knowled available knowledge and availability because you have it it's happened in the US it's happened elsewhere and therefore by the way it's easier to learn and the algorithms are more transparent you can go read up online you can figure out what to do um I would say most of the other platforms Flipkart is almost there as well I think getting closer and closer to self serve in Walmart and so on I think on mintra Etc the way I would sort of think about it is I would actually go talk to ex MRA people most practical way to do it is to go talk to two category managers so let's say I want to do t-shirts since it seems like your favorite brand to launch um I would go talk to the category manager on t-shirts right or actually I would go talk to them and say firstly is there an opportunity for a t-shirt is there an opportunity at a certain price point is there an opportunity at a certain design so people are looking for plus sizes people are looking for oversized whatever right people are looking for pop culture like what Raj was saying whatever it is I would get some insights from one of these guys to narrow this down in terms of what does it take to growth hack on mintra by the way I'm now finding more and more blogs that are available and so on I don't know if you guys have searched for it but it's quite interesting people talk about mintra being a visibility Le platform so there are two types of platforms one is you go search for something and you get to a product the other is you go browse for something and you get inspired to a product so that's visibility lead the other is Search Le Amazon is search lead minra a or visibility Le there the real thing to understand is what are all the visibility triggers so you go look for filters what's new what's hot you know price low to high right size right so you go keep looking for what is it that the platform looks for it's no different than his idea on Google and Facebook on Insta in wants to do reals therefore he does reals minra wants to sell what's new and therefore you figure out how to hack that way into it right so that's how you go find out I think the easiest is to there are now some online resources but talking to a few X people is the most practical way to get started can I add a layer on there the other most important so these are the skills that you can develop on go and you can talk to these people and you can do it the second most important question you should ask yourself is where is my ideal customer spending time H okay so I'll give you an example of a pizza company they did crazy really really well in this this was in us so they found out that their ideal TG is spending a lot of time on multiple platforms one of them needs to be dating sites dating apps right so let's say pick up a Tinder or a bumble or something like that they started showing ads there and they were like if she gives you number faster than we deliver our pizza you get 30% off now that's a growth hack yeah this is what growth ha me so you need to ask yourself question now imagine that's a massive massive massive technique because a lot of people would do it just to satisfy their ego not because of that and correct correct correct you need to ask yourself where are your people spending time and need to find out underprice attention in that because if you can't find underprice attention there's very hard to sell a very very you know difficult product or as basic product as t-shirt and now coming to starting point where you ask me how if you want to start a t-shirt company how would you do it so here's I ask a question myself if I don't have a differentiated product I try to think of if I don't have a unique selling preposition I ask myself do I have a unique show off preposition because you can show off preposition because if build a show offy you can do it let's say I have none of this I don't know how to show off because design comes in the show off play You're great designer you can build something that people will show off if let's say I don't have any of this I would I always ask myself question what's pre and post because so this goes when the my most fmcg like you know not not clothing like not fashion I would like personal grooming and stuff like that right so if there's a shampoo Market which is popping in India I don't want to launch another shampoo I would ask myself a question what can I do to sell somebody who's using shampoo after shampoo post product or a pre-product a pre before shampoo what they can do or post shampoo what they can do because that's how I get an entry to somebody who uses exactly my thing and once I get an entry automatically I'll start selling my other products as well yeah and by the way the the way we sort of I mean the way I would sort of do it just building a little bit Raj on that is three post is one I think literally by the way um again I I go back to the very basic thing Amazon actually you can go and find out longtail key search words you can find out where there is null sets you can say by the way in the last last month what are the search results that led to zero and you find all of them and you stack rank them by volume and then you say that's what I want to go do I'm saying this I think unfortun I mean so since since this a podcast where people want I think there's so much of data out there if you actually make a little bit of effort you can actually make dramatically better judgment calls than 90% of the population right and this growth hacking applies to Google and Facebook the most so if you start D to see right the real question there is how do you not pay as much Google in Facebook tax and there there's an entire science behind it right how do you actually think about SEO how do you think about the structure of your website how do you think about what keywords to bid on how do you that's beyond you're saying 25 to 100 the next phase that's the 20 to 100 so 0 to 20 I know we had a slight difference but not dramatic but my sense is great product initial brand value proposition 80% Marketplace 20% DDC 20 to 100 crores by the way continue to crack something that's unique it can be I think to larest point it can be sourcing it can be design it can be whatever and crack Performance Marketing whether it's Google Facebook Amazon content whatever it is build something around it 100 and above to 500 you have to figure out how to make offline work which is a different skill set for a lot of people who have started it this way you have to figure out and really make sure that the product goes from push to pull what do I mean by push to pull what is the percentage of organic sales versus what is the percentage of adrenaline sales which is Performance Marketing that percent from 20 to 100 maybe call it 50/50 performance and organic 100 plus that Performance Based sales should come down to 30% because if it doesn't 30 40% it doesn't it just the cost of it keeps going up and up and up and up and up right in the Amazon of the world you know the one interesting thing how you can build a brand is also uh that used to happen in offline at least you look at CAD categories which are Super unorganized and what is getting organized so for example ATA so I read this was again 20134 I read that 94% India still buys chuata that was 2013 I was like okay because 94% is still unorganized the way it's like not it's just going away from cities probably there's going to be a time where this won't happen and that's why there's an opportunity to build at an art brand makes sense any opportunity you're seeing now unorganized to ored I think toilet specifically I see as an opportunity give me an example like cleaners toilet cleaners pre-s sprays post sprays yeah uh you know seed sprays I don't know I don't know what product I've not spent enough timea is doing a lot of this be safe yeah yeah I've not spent enough time to understand what products but I think toilet as a category is popping up because a lot of people not just don't want their house to smell good but also their toilets to smell good I think pets is the other big one in mind yeah it's immediate and people are sping for it yeah so I mean look there's one new store which has opened here which is huge head yeah heads up for taals so I think pets is interesting I mean you know everybody's heard of dinks apparently there's something called D what is DS no kids right my daughter was explaining now this to me saying there's dink wad there's double income no kid with a dog that's me right double income yet but but I didn't know second income is in indoor second comes so uh so so this population is growing and they spend on the dog or the cat as much as they spend on their baby right I mean or child but I think this is an interesting space Market there's a market and I think it's going to explode Singapore yeah that's like very small Market yeah Singapore but I think the Singapore will spend we were talking about naming a brand in between for a second yeah how does how does one figure out what to name a brand let's sck to the T-shirt example what should I name this brand I'm starting let's say I have borrowed managed to get 10 lakh rupes I'm starting a t-shirt brand I need to figure out the name first how do I go about naming my brand so I'll tell you uh uh a colleague of mine who is a brand Authority in a way and uh his daughter started a brand and she started exactly with a T-shirt and she named a brand creatures of creatures of habit in the first instance I didn't understand much and it was a d2c brand and I think they are they are now profitable what worked I think the brand the product but the name worked for a particular reason creatures of habit I think I think the d2c world is accepting a little bit of a odd name story a story it's telling a story yeah by the way new research there is just adding to this nine out of uh 10 genzies believe on Advertising yeah maybe different ways different sorts but if you tell them that you're advertising people are receptive to see that advertise and buy something on that there's no level of M so you can name your brand uh anything you can name your brand nickel also I think and we can create a story around the word n that's what I was going to say a word inherently has a story in the word is it a it helps of course it helps right I mean if you have Tesla and you're running an electric car company I mean it helps right so I think can you just come up with the name for t-shirt company which has a story in the name can I add like I wouldn't choose any name which is like Which is popular I would choose a name which is easily available on SEO and correct that's what I was also say I would come up with something which has no meaning yeah because if you choose a word which has meaning then you're fighting against something already so would you say something which doesn't have a meaning truly but sounds like certain and it sounds like something it sounds interesting so I'll give you an example of of our brand recently we named Blanco it's a perfume brand yeah okay so we named it Blanco because King in his day-to-day lingo in language he uses Blanco as a substitute for winning lifestyle and confidence so he has given meaning to it Blanco like white Blanco is it has no meaning but Blanco is is equal to French way to say white it could be so it just means confidence in winning giving a meaning to the name which has no meaning and then it C catches up on the story n my my nephew started a brand on gut health and they were working the whole Insight was uh there are good bacteria and there is bad bacteria so how should you and we want to attack that uh good bacteria has to be more to kill the bad bacteria yeah so we worked on uh along with them and we call the brand the good bug H and it caught on quite well at the Bren not being the good B I think the story would have been different that's a good name actually yeah that's a good name everybody like the name no but or peanut butter right call it my fitness my fitness that's a great name it's a great name but doesn't that get lost my fitness no actually by the way trademark is available which is why it was done but my fitness is extendable right and basically you have to take a brand positioning you can either say mother giving the child healthy things which is one positioning the other is you're an athlete or a gym goer who needs protein in which case my f is a perfect fit both is there another Trend that anything food yeah where you at Fitness is just selling more today no I don't think so nothing like that I don't think so I mean this case on Peanut Butter it was a good name but I think it I think peanut butter it was exactly the time where it was just happening and we in foodall created a machine and where we were selling people could take out the peanut butter you can take any correct correct correct but it's really taken off now I mean as a trend it's really food do is is is crazy I just want to because named food all I want to give you an Insight on what I saw so what I did there was raspberries yeah just put there okay this is I'm talking about I think Santa Cruz whilea food all right yeah so the raspberries right so it was let's say price at for example thousand yep there was right next to it I think to there was like Brazilian raspberries or something like there was some countries name in it right same and there was like 2,000 something that was expensive I don't exactly know the price but there was just this one country name I kept it both of them together 10 10 I just stood there to see like what happens the 2001 got finished like quicker than the Thousand rupee one food as a market like people if you add a story to it that it's Brazilian or Portuguese or something people buy like is that true or like origin matter origin very crazy to me just to write an origin and it will fly faster than the, rupe one because the price was crazy different if the price is higher do people automatically assume higher quality uh yes within a band explain so for example if you basically say know you guys no I I I think that's true what you're saying like just go no no I see look I mean um let me give you um let me give you the my fitness example we charge more than our competitors who are in the same sort of space right I don't know happy low XY Z right whatever we charge more we charge by 20% more the minute you get to 50% % more there is actually a basket cost see because by the way a a a a 500 G last for what is see basically if you want to buy something right you know you have some amount that you spend on grocery right can't you buy that bag that they give you in put everything in it you need just he me out he me out so you know there is a certain amount of money I want to spend right it can be at a premium but it can't break the bank so for example if I'm spending a th000 rupees on 5 500 G of peanut butter suddenly you start to think a little differently but if I'm spending 200 rupees more there is a breakpoint right so I don't know if that's making sense right so there's a band for every one of these within that band I think premium people think it is actually you're charging a little bit more the packaging makes a difference all of that makes a difference but I don't know maybe sure you can comment on it but if you charge five times for a utilitarian thing then I think it gets to be tough I have to say like digressing here my favorite kind is shopping is supermarkets yeah there is some the only kind of shopping I'd go do in person yeah there is something so therapeutic about being in a supermarket picking up all these random boxes which have like weird colors on them so they've got something in the physical shopping bang on I don't know how much research has gone into it a lot of research lot of research lot of research so there are there are codes for every category so you'll find similar color codes for a particular category so every category uh is thought in a particular way and if you move away from that Cod it just doesn't sell the consumers get used to a certain like if you look at the toothpaste you will find the red and white as a color code if you move away from that it becomes difficulty so so packaging design how the mind works I think so much of research has gone into building a Brand Packaging design everything so you guys said Health if you necessarily add into every product is not selling more it doesn't mean that exactly but the odds of it selling more go up maybe maybe for a while I I think something which has not been discussed also is whatever you create what is the longetivity of that yeah and what does brand mean brand means you are getting instead of a commodity of X rupees a kilo you are getting X Plus 30% something that's what the brand is all about and you have to position the brand in a way that you can keep on getting that premium until when you will be able to get that premium so as a peanut butter now how how is he building the brand that it will have that longetivity to get that premium that's right throughout the year throughout the lifetime I think that's where the brand will stand out I think by the way con sorry sorry no no just to baby just complete that I think the longevity point I really think is important because I think Brands get built up over decades no but if you build on growth hecking how will the brand long happen I think there are two different things K I think there is a distribution and how do you optimize the distribution fair right it's like getting the right Mall space right you in in your days you would get the space I think that's a different problem than building brand Building Product and so on which is absolutely important for me to do so I'm saying growth hacking is the new way of getting a great space in a mall right the analogy right I think here on brand building I think this consistency point is important you have to be known for something that compounds over time right you know it can be taste it can be um so for example in our my in the in the my with the the peanut butter right I think there is usually oil separation that happens because it's emulsified so we have done an emulsification which is make sure that it it still it still separates but it doesn't feel like oil so when you take it and taste it when you open it it just is nicer it can be it can be small thing right it can be a large thing but you need something that differentiates this and is consistent over time or if you have a fashion brand right you need some design direction that may change but the ethos is still consistent over a long period of time right because I think it takes compounding to build a brand right and my point is they're not at odds with growth hacking my my point is growth hacking is distribution for me distribution right so like two Brands which comes to my mind in the new digital world or one was mamad which was built around onion as a ingredient was it yeah onion oil was the ingredient and through which now they have extended the brand to many production categories but they why did onion oil work for them I think people had memories about onion oil being healthy for the hair but nobody had nobody had thought about it and they came into that market and there was another brand which was built around coffee which is m caffa m caffine caffine yeah do you know of any other things like onion oil which have not been we are just uh uh my son-in-law is launching a brand called in Beauty space which is uh which is a milk as a base Dairy as a base the science of milk and milk again has been a lot of connotation around Beauty but nobody Dove uses milk they uses milk as a Insignia they uses it in the packaging but they don't use milk in the product but they use it in the packaging right so milk has a lot of connotation in Indian uh culture so you saying pick something from I think Aura many people have over everything old in new form yeah yeah is coming in see I think there's a there are two ways to sort of play the beauty game right I think there is a ayurveda versus science do Aura Market has been overdone I can see Kama and Forest Essentials as the leaders in that premium and patanjali at the bottom I think there's still see I think Beauty as a market is still so underpenetrated there's room for many many Brands I do think you need some real differentiation however what I think just putting just putting Aura doesn't mean anything right I think you need efficacy and you need to actually build a little bit of real research anybody describe efficacy or why does somebody not compare product A to B based on efficacy so firstly by the way I do think people do more so at least when I was growing up I I don't think I ever looked at the back of a bottle on what the ingredients my kids today by the way look through every ingredient yeah and then whether it's crueltyfree paraben free see these are things that don't register but I think the Next Generation actually does look at this and does look at the ingredients so firstly I think that is changing I think except for maybe factor of affluence or is that India W largely India one India one for sure but I also think it's awareness so that 120 million people will care about these things very much very much and they the 120 care more about it now because there is more information available online and content and so on so I think there are people talking about it so there's more awareness so we did can I add on this yeah so every time you're going to build a brand which is in a cluttered category you can either build it by aspiration or education so you can either Aspire people for your products to buy them that your product significantly better value or you can educate them about the efficacy and the stuff that you were talking about so for example minimalist did the exact same thing minimalist came here started educating people on certain ingredients certain things which were always there but nobody talked about it so honestly and transparently right and that's what it works so either you educate people or you Aspire people to do and build your brand in a certain way especially in a cluttered category right clutter C that's what I'm talking about like when you do basic product you need to be because and this works by the way even in tier 2 tier three in villages as well you educate them on certain things they they buy so it just works so so we did we did Health kind of helps but not necessarily the only factor in determining which product you would pick Y what about and we said breaking down the ingredients using what is not harmful matters to the 120 people 120 million people in India a India one what about sustainability and climate change I see like whenever I look at a pitch from a consumer facing brand Everybody by default has Health sustainability these things are very generic in common clean Beauty clean Beauty so if everybody's doing them is there any value left in them uh I think it should be done but is it a sales point in the manner that people are selling it so there are three phases of any beauty brand of fmcg this I'm only learning from Korea because Korea has been ahead of it right so there were three phases first 10 of those Beauty okay just like beauty products they will come with a certain level of value you buy it function and you go ahead second was performance so performative Beauty how they call it functional Beauty how they call it they spot on say this product will make your acne disappear prod very Sol okay and then third level comes with the clean Beauty okay because so I don't think India perform of beauty is being deployed so well to clean beauty that it's I this is my view I think we're far from that but I'm telling you looked 100 pictures from brands in food and Beauty in 95 of them have sustainability return in their pitch Tech yeah so I think a little bit of very small I was in tech in The Last Five Years everybody had to put on a pitch but I think it's a pitch Tech thing I don't think it's a differentiation thing right in my view I mean the real question is will somebody pay a premium for it I think the answer will be almost same organic also in a way yeah correct I'm saying will somebody pay premium for it because it costs more to get to be sustainable the answer is almost always no if the answer to that is no there's no econom iic model so I think should one do it and be responsible the answer is yes is it a selling factor for a customer to be able to pay more my my current sense is no Kish would you like to go with the insights like some of them from what we had discussed I think we when we we started understanding the new age consumers who are digital first consumers and we looked at uh their color of pursuit the new Lifestyles and we found something very interesting we found a group of a lot of women coming together and uh getting into especially in restaurants you can see them bunch of them together not the evening time not in morning time you used to see them I think it's happening because of uh lot of free time and uh and people want to go out and experience a lot of new things and uh I think and getting that freedom to go out then there is a chemical know it all like we were mentioning his your child wants to read everything behind so there lot of consumers now who wants to live read everything what's written on the back of the pack and they're very conscious about the ingredients getting used another Community we are looking at is gated communities people who live in gated Apartments they and yeah he must be the belandur community I don't know he lives here okay okay so this is another community so I think community and I think they have a lot of common interest they play a lot together the stre they we try and play a lot together too and another huge uh another lifestyle which is x-free life I don't want gluten I don't want this I want this I think there are so many NOS in the preferences of um so in a way are you saying India is now so Broad and diversified that instead of saying we will build for even India a which is 120 million people you need to break it down to micro niches and build specifically for them like I need to build you can build a brand around that and then it can expand to because ultimately you have to enter a category is that how a brand should be built 0 to1 identifying a Micro Niche not going too broad you can't go broad very difficultly agree the Shar a p very difficult to build you have to be Niche you have to become the big fish in a pond first yes yeah and then enter in somewhere like like how Mama entered in and now they have expanded into many many categories would that also mean for categories which are really large with ITC and H and Marico and all these companies there's no Point wasting time to try and compete with them I don't I think they they they know that they have a very strong balance sheet and ultimately every brand which is getting buil which will be successful will be bought over by them because they will take it to that next 200 to, for sure so no point building there no they have the distribution they have the reach they directly competing with one of their products without some differentiation I think there's no point they don't allow they don't allow you in our earlier afar we had a brand called tasty treat which was into biscuits and uh we garnered quite a substantial market share in borne we captured 3% uh in waer biscuit we captured 25% but uh the amount of cases they uh they came after us uh yeah on everything by cases what do you mean your brand is identical similar they'll find something or the other right they will not let you survive they they believe that uh that shelf space and the mind space belongs to them and it belongs to nobody and they will not let anybody come into that and when they buy you do they buy are you at a premium yes yeah yeah yeah yes I think all the recent d2c purchases have been at a premium but I think the odds of succeeding that are so low that you should not attempt it yeah I that's what I was going to say I think I think it's not bad yeah and uh because they they can't do that Innovation they can't build it and secondly you have to start somewhere in a Nish right not that Cel has not attempted they they went in they attempted something like a good life long name I think it didn't work yeah yeah so I think the niche thing is because see can you compete so I think the only counter to that is my sense and I think even that is changing quite rapidly if you ask me 3 four years ago I would say most of the big players were not digitally very good so you could actually still create some scale online and then figure out a way to see if that was enough I don't think that's true anymore I think all of them are now quite good digitally and so I would certainly not go head-to-head competition I me especially if we're starting right right would you like to go with another Insight Kish is the OG he can give us hundreds there is a I I would say somebody has to somebody has to start a brand around something I would rather do it for gamers and gamblers there not a single single brand for them and they are huge in numbers ging compan people who game a lot okay and people for them keyboards for them whatever no no maybe some brand around them brand around them as well you will be subconsciously talking to them in a particular way and they will relate to you midnight scrollers that's a huge Community again like neut Tropics stuff like that which not that product I think they are a group of people they are a community by themselves they're a community and can you build a product for the community so you're not talking about utilitarian stuff for them you're talking about position interesting interesting I think the way of hitting a micro yeah yeah it's a Micro Niche right right another Insight wow this is good no I like uh like we want my daughter wanted to get into uh something around children H so we thought of uh getting into through a furniture brand building a not a furniture brand but getting into Furniture as a category yeah but then we thought of a she thought of a name that how can we design it around uh the the child and how uh you can work around the well-being of the child and the imagination of the child and child's uh growth so we call the brand smers we entered through a category which is very Niche stud study tables India has two and a half CR babies produced and even 12% of that is 30 legs yeah in the community which we want to make them spend money on right then into beds we can getting into toys the it's it's smarts around childhood but like if I slept on a Smart's bed from when I was 5 to 15 when I'm 22 and making a shopping decision will I remember smart stuff yeah you will not but you're not but we are getting to that audience only see there's enough of a replacement Market I think I think children's Market I mean we have there's it's for some reason there are not many large Brands and I there's not a single brand yeah and so I think there's a huge opportunity in children's clothes children's accessories so this brand now can be extended into clothing also but very limited line of clothing which talks educational uh messages okay another very like intrinsic to the conversation qu question I had how important is it to have many skews if you're starting a new brand in fashion clothing so Cosmetics it's a great question or is it better to start a brand with fewer SKS and depend on the category you're getting in let's talk about fashion fashion may I would say if you are doing a d2c not more than 60 70 options to start with and that's across sizes yeah sizes are separate options so 60 70 options in full size sets I would agree with that I think the only U sizes are separate size are separate sep total number of SK will be large large right so 60 times a size set which is 322 whatever right so very difficult to manage otherwise and is the way to build these is the way to build these Brands you create a bunch of inventory and keep it so you're able to fulfill or I believe that I come from a physical world and the digital world is very different in fashion and I believe digital brand in fashion has to do X number of stock turn otherwise there's no sense Y at least there their stock turn has to be in excess of 78% 7 eight times minimum what is a stock turn in the phys stock T is what stock you holding and how many how much you are able to rotate it how fast how much it's working Capital Management n right so I by the way fully agree I think uh firstly the only tweak I have is in general online values width more than depth the reason is purely algorithmic what happens is you have 600,000 skus in a mintra number of skus that are attacked to a same brand name is one weightage in an algorithm that basically then says you're a large brand and therefore you get automatically more visibility right so width is valued more than depth because you have no shelf space limitation in the online World therefore by definition when you're doing it online versus offline you need more options right I 100% agree I think with Kishore I think in online um I'm going back a little bit to my McKenzie sort of days right it is important to think about what I call design for fast turnaround yeah right um and what I mean by that is by the way you know a standard lead time for making a product maybe 60 90 days but we don't operate like that so the question is what can you standardize right so can you keep the same fabric and can you customize it right can you sort of dye the fabric different colors but keep the base fabric gray fabric the same so I think quick turnarounds which is I think kishor's point and thinking about a manufacturing backend supply chain that works with width is really critical incidentally by the way I think it's equally critical for beauty can you start a beauty brand with 60 70 SKS if I you me much fewer you need much less right like five skes 10 SK yeah so 10 SKS you're fine I I said 60 options not SKU so that's a lot what the difference between 60 60 designs in all sizes stock keeping unit versus a right option yeah but I think it's uh you know I think this width versus depth is I think one of the most different interesting things totally in the digital world in the digital versus the and and I think there's again this is an interesting growth hack if you can figure out a backend system that can turn out fast number of options that get cataloged very quickly you can sort of build on generative AI so that cataloging becomes faster then you have another sustainable Advantage right to figuring out how do you actually win in this what is the role of AI in all this tomorrow will there be a time where I go online I think of what kind of t-shirt I want what kind of cosmetic product I want AI generates it for me right away and chips it to me so I think there is very um I'm sorry to sound more mundane and boring but I think there is real value in data science and machine learning in the business operations of fashion so I just want to take a minute to do it I think the um I I'll come to the most extreme example we did some of that experimentation but I think it's more an experiment in the mintra world right but I'll tell you what the most difficult problem in fashion is it's actually demand forecasting at some level how much inventory to make what to make Etc and have that ready I think if you use machine learning and data science as algorithms we're using it now you are able to forecast with better accuracy right what are the factors what are the moving parts so the biggest thing is the same SKU right option SKU doesn't repeat what a machine learning algorithm is able to figure out is what you call a clustering one black dress is similar to another black dress which is similar to another black dress therefore I use the history of the previous data to predict what a new option is going to do if you can get that algorithm right then your ability to forecast accurately becomes much better and if you have more and more data which you do in an online world you're able to do it dramatically better I'll give you another interesting example if you take pricing when you discount a product when the inventory keeps going down and what do you price it at actually is a very difficult problem to do and most people do it unscientifically you can change your price converted into a science it's fully I mean we have converted it right so for example for us one of the big Tech products that we build is pricing it's data science L pricing again you have a volume price elasticity curve for every SKU it doesn't matter whether it's a fashion SKU my fitness SK etc for the algorithm right how how relevant or cardal is delivery time say we're talking about platforms right yes if you can bring manufacturing time down to say 24 hours why do you will you eventually get to a world where you don't need to have any inventory somebody orders you manufactur and Ship N you know when 3D manufacturing came about we thought supermarkets will be over there'll be 3D manufacturing machine you go there and produce whatever you want and take it home but it didn't work it didn't happen but Supermarket is wide in terms of raw lot of products could have been made M your spectical lot of things could have been made maybe the raw material was the Monopoly or something was there otherwise 3D manufacturing would have could have sold almost every product especially for fashion it seems to make sense right lot of things I would say because fashion a lot of Home Goods no what you're saying fashion you're saying no inventory or 3D manufacturing so I think it's a very difficult I mean it's theoretically Poss I mean theoretically anything is possible but I would say I think it's a little bit far away in my view I think is it possible to use machine learning to reduce inventory and reduce wastage the answer is absolutely and I think it's it's differentiated enough that if you build this as a as a real capability you know you get two three four percentage points more in bid that I think makes a or or profits that makes a big difference I saw some devices like I think the reason I buy a lot of things offline not online especially shoes like my running shoes which I wear in the gym for example is you have to touch them and feel them yes is there a solution to that problem ever no no I I I think material surfaces there has been some development yes but not there yet but it might come about but the sense of uh touch and that emotion and the feel which you go through still long long you're saying for those categories don't even attempt to build online bus it might change to a certain extent material surfaces at least I believe there will be something which will come about I think there will be I mean my read by the way is look in shoes I think there's touch feel and size size by the way today you go on minra there's a size finder for you it it turns on the camera of your phone there's 3D and you get the size it still don't get the touch and feel but you solve a third of the problem but let me get more specific we have a investment in a common friends company called Vu Main Street Marketplace high-end sneakers do you think if I'm buying a shoe for 800 rupees or 1,000 rupees I would be okay with punting online but if I'm buying a shoe for 102 ,000 rupees I would never shop online no it's not true you would I would still shop online I think by the way the I buy online you would buy online yeah I think what is different though is the level of trust in the person who sells it needs to be and the brand needs to be dramatically higher right um it is true that Beyond 5,000 the volumes drop precipitously you have used the brand once and you would have used the brand once what if I've not used we're talking about people who are building a new brand are we saying that if you're going 0o to one in a new brand say for example if you want to build a sneakers price more than 20,000 rupes online very difficult very difficult online don't attempt it I won't buy I would not do it I mean I would not do it you you go offline I mean in that case then I think that's the right but I think people will take uh they will they have some inquiry they'll take it to their homes one can do that but here's what you can solve right if you see genuine user testimonials then also you might buy online yeah for example but does anyone believe that anymore because everybody's I think people do believe it people do see reviews and ratings people believe I think they they obviously do a little bit of research saying you can buy from Amazon no I'm not saying you can buy by the way just again sorry just to be very clear so that people don't get the wrong view since a lot of people hopefully see this podcast uh I don't think it is okay to get fake reviews just to be very clear I do think it is okay to solicit reviews which are honest reviews right right you know it can be a bad review by the way D Amazon will send you email saying can you this that's right so I'm not for a minute talking about getting reviews randomly I'm saying by the way do it in a actual manner hopefully your product is also a good one so people will give you a good review there right another big thing online shopping they say 20 to 30% are fakes if you can't trust a platform to curate fakes can I tell you the core of what the problem is it's actually a very nuanced problem this is from my minra days right 30 plus% of products in fashion get return okay the return goes to a warehouse there is a warehouse guy who cannot understand the difference between one Nike and another Nike let's say the customer returns a different Nike to you there is a chance that it can go into the yeah into the inventory it happens is that how most come about online of course there are there are scamsters who have been created out of this new econom so people are buying correct shoes and then and then they return return a fake shoe and they keep could it is it that hard for Amazon to imprint a bar but kind I think we I think you know everything by the way can be solved and everything by the way keep people find new ways around it right so for example we used to sell ethnic wear in minra I think one of the things we did in ethnic wear is put a tag that is really really difficult to take off because what people would do is buy ethnic wear you know you would then um uh go for the wedding go for the occasion and then return it right because you have a 15-day or a 30-day return policy right so you so should we say here that there are so many Savvy scamsters out there if you're building a Brand 0 to1 in cosmetics fashion shoes whatever be really careful with forming a returns policy CU you will likely get scammed not at all I think n it's it's very small by I was just saying that NE in fashion specifically necessarily these are not scamsters a large majority of people just believe in buying three options trying one of them and then returning of them talk about two different things two different no but my sense by the way is firstly if you're starting a new brand unless it's a very high-end brand I would not worry about doing fakes and Returns the reason is you're not a Nike The Reason by the way they're doing some of that is because it's a Nike shoe right you know if it's Brand X or brand y they're not going to do it so I would not worry however can I just reframe it I think you should worry about fit and return percentages if you are in fashion what is the fit in return so um in fashion in Beauty and everywhere in e-commerce there are returns it's the nature it's a it's a shopping feature because you don't touch and see returns actually can change the economics of a business because if you have 30% 35% coming back you pay for the reverse Logistics the inventory gets stuck Etc so as you think about launching a new product getting your fit right and communicating that fit through an image is again a very important thing because otherwise what happens is you launch a product and you find that it's sold very well month two by the way 50% comes back you have a real problem so I think getting the fit right is important so next we'll go into Raj's insights from building Brands around influencers unfortunately we missed the boat and we only got 1% or something in This brilliant company he's building yeah and now he's raising a round which is three times as big as the last one so we can't afford it anyway but uh maybe you tell us some insights around the influencer piece and how to build Brands around content and distribution which is individualistic in nature so I'll tell you I don't think V say brand building is different in offline world or a digital first or a social first brand building fundamentals are same okay I just feel that every time a new generation of buyers come there's a layer to be added yeah so the first set of Brands were built on function okay the second set of Brands were built on emotion mhm now so function plus emotion right now I think the brands are going to be built on function emotion and community so that's what we were talking about so that's the basic Insight of what we're trying to do right so to give it more in like to simplify it better like my product needs to be better than all the other products or has to be some differentiative distinctive value it has to stand for certain level of emotion for example let's say Red Bull is Adventure okay so that's an emotion that you appeal to an emotion so is your brand becoming an emotion right I keep giving Red Bull example because it's the most common one y and then I think the third layer which is getting added is the attention and the community part so if you don't have the community of people who can who are technically acting as evangelists for you it's it gets very difficult Beyond a point to build a brand and to scale it mhm so that's like to mix all of these three that's where the influencer comes in pcture so so we as a company we crack function and emotion for a product and then we take on influencers attention and Community Building uh ability and their Community to mix all of these three thing together so that's how I think the brands of the future are going to be built it's already happening around us where Prime drinks we saw you guys know Prime drinks right in a year $250 million sales then same thing happened with Mr be's Feasta bills which is now I think declining a bit yeah then what is working for say Fenty Beauty Mr Beast these guys but is not working for say for example Bollywood cuz none of the brands propagated by Bollywood seem to be working okay here's what I feel I can't say at large celebrities around the world I can take talk about two problems which I see with Bollywood celebrity Le problem in India first authenticity okay so I was just telling you about a stat that genzies believe in advertising they're okay with it they trust seven out of 10 genzies believe in influencer marketing as well yeah they're fine but if as an influencer I'm telling them and trying to organically push it by not disclosing that this is an advertised product they don't believe it they in fact there's a cancel culture going on they're like right so you have to be very honest about it so that's the first thing so I think with Bollywood celebrities and stuff the authenticity is not getting built that's the first second so is there not there is example by the way my I'll just add to this and like why I believe this thing yeah the second and the most important thing in India specifically few Bollywood brands that have started one day they come up like and be like hey this is my brand use it there's no backstory and actor is changing every year as per their roles and the St the the storytelling that they're doing right there's no certain level of values which are getting built over the years with an influencer for five years they're building on one value but is does that mean cricketer Brands work so cricketer Brands work because they only have one value but which cricketer brand is really working in India leave verat kohy and Puma I think by the way that's not his brand it's a endorsement but I think by the way for me the most interesting one I mean it's still playing out but hrx HX is by the way something that we but that's an outlier by the way that's true to community then no it's very true it's and it's completely true what you said right which is it's consistent with Ric's personality as well I think he genuinely believes in Fitness but can I ask you a question yeah TIG sh started Why didn't it work yeah um but tiger is more India too yeah yeah yeah and uh that's why I think Rik is India one still sorry that's one I think the other thing also is I think Rik by the way it was India one was consistent also picked the right platform and partner and the right product also I was coming to thect and platform both were very good I mean and you you had the distribution and the reach also correct correct correct correct also I believe that The Simple Theory which I I think I I always see a celebrity making a wrong frit between the cohort of the customers can I derive on that thought and ask you which celebrity should create what kind of a brand one or two examples R ranir Singh protein should build an energy drink energy energy energy energy protein anything energy energy I think would be the one I think ran Singh can also pull off a sexual Wellness brand very well yeah which he's also doing I think right he's doing that what should I sell if I were a brand what would I sell this is interesting you wouldn't tell me the truth otherwise so tell quite luxury white luxury so every every Star would have some value system some values which one has to as a brand like Katrina has built a beauty brand has that done well though that's not done badly that's done well actually naika eventually bought it the products are also good by the that's doing well yeah what happened to I don't know how well it is doing I think it is overpriced a little it's very early days also I it's also high as I don't think it's doing well it's overpriced don't know but the price points are very high thepa and anant are friends so he'll defend no I mean if the product is good more power to her to be successful right I don't know if it's successful or not can I also add something I think what we was saying all three of us in the beginning you need to have a differentiative product in the beginning so even if you're celebrity you can't come with a no no agree fully so I was telling you it's easier to build an addition category than a replacement category and L of celebrities have done like in replacement replacement replacement category doesn't can can you broaden that thought what is addition so it's like let's say if I am I love skincare routines I have already a three-step skincare routine I buy let's say a face wash a cream and a sunscreen I should like somebody should not sell sunscreen to me somebody should sell one added product not try to replace what I existing believe in what could that be so that could be let's say scrub on 15 days once in 15 days that could be a night cream that could be a serum before I apply my my moisturizer and how does somebody build the need for a product outside of the three so that's what he said long-term keyword like longtail keywords you try to find out you also try to do the Google search where you try to see search volume watch categories are growing up and then you try to find out products where there are not enough products where you can build a category so if already there's something existing at large which is destroyed with you with your community and attention are going to tackle on the same thing I think there are higher chances of failing the other thing that I think celebrity Le Brands need to be thoughtful about is how do you get the product right see I'll tell you all of the detailed assortment planning price planning for HX was all done by the MRA private branding right at some level I mean it's a joint it's a collaboration and so on but I think you should not confuse your values and what you want to stand for with product expertise they're two very different things was that at your time HX yes did you work on it like with him yeah yeah I mean I think it see I'll tell you I think the first is atleisure as a space was growing category yeah was a category that I think was a good bet on second it was very consistent with them third in India by the way you have Puma rebok Nike Adidas and then nothing right so this was at 50% of the price point and therefore very affordable applies to India one I mean it wasn't an India 2 product India one product but it was a differentiated offering in a growth market and it made athia accessible to many and they didn't overuse rtic also so he was not shouting the No No you're not shouting from the top I have a question for you okay what watch are you wearing watch watch yeah car car car I don't know how to pronce okay what shoe are you wearing Jordans what t-shirt are you wearing t-shirt is census there's a there's a small brand what cell phone are you using iPhone what uh trousers are you wearing it's a tailor made trouser why if I were to sum up your consumption what car do you drive BMW if I were to sum up his consumption his consumption is dramatically greater than mine I think it's the one conclusion I come to you're you're signaling right now but that's okay yeah that's exact we know about your wine collection now let's not go there what you're signaling it's a problem I thought it hit bangalor less than other cities but it seems to be coming here but why is why is why are indian-made Brands such a small component of you so this is Indian this is Indian these are only two things yeah but out of the 50 lakhs of spend you told me you're summing up for, rupees including your car I tell you correct I on the fun side I'll tell you the shoes and the watch is given by my brother so let's just put it that but like coming to the part but I'm guessing you're not wearing b b actually ATT that's not even IND yeah but why is that you so I think uh I tell you the major reason is because we've not been exposed by the brands to to build a signal value which are Indian made okay so give you an example yeah so something let's say so I'm in that phase where right now I'm just making money I want to show off my preferences and choices I want to put you know what I love about what he's saying is unlike so many other people I've spoken to he's not virtue signaling it's a beautiful quality like he didn't evade the question that he drives a BMW I think it's it's such a thing that should be appreciate it like you did a little bit and he did not I think it's I'm Tam Bram I think there was some you know it may not be virtual signaling yeah I think it's such a disservice to society where people pretend to be Saints and I'll tell you this the people who pretend to be most saintly are the most immoral of them all I'm not talking about you I'm talking societ I I think by the way you know I think you have a little bit of what actually signaling is which seems to impact a little bit more I don't think it's as serious right I think it's a casual thing I think people behave very differently I think uh exercising too much importance to signaling of various kinds is also a problem right I think that's also a reverse problem this is signaling this is mainstream now like whatever you're doing in life if it's you I think that is I I I developed a philosophy which has worked very well with me is whatever you do in life the heart and the mind has to converge yeah yeah and I have no problems with anything ever yeah I I by the way fully I mean it's hard to not agree I think right with some of this but I think my point is you do what you feel comfortable with I don't think you should judge signaling reverse signaling or any of it I to each their own the question is are you doing what learning about your personality and that will reflect on your behavior and your actions yeah and I'm saying that's okay right knowing a personality type it doesn't mean by the way that you I think you should absolutely own what you are but I think it is okay to have very different what you are oh yeah right I think that's the point I'm tring which is fine but the question underneath this all is are you what you are are you signaling what you are or are you trying to be what you think you should be and that in itself is a signal yeah I think uh it's a very difficult sort of complicated question but my my answer by the way is actually quite simple I actually believe that whatever I feel comfortable with I do I don't particularly need to sort of be contrarian in order to sort of prove a point either right I mean just to put this in perspective right I mean just because you don't have consumption in one way doesn't mean you don't consume in another way I mean we to each our own right yeah you you consum in wine and not yeah each of us does it in our own way right and I think you what you enjoy I have a like like I always believe that I am what I am inside outside I have always been the same but the other side of the spectrum the people who are judging you don't look at you that way a lot of people misread me yeah because people believe you are pretentious you have something else and I have faced these issues quite a lot you know this is something I'm only realizing for myself now I spent the vast majority of my life pretending to be something I thought I should be by virtue of my peer group Society the people I looked up to all of that I'm not there yet but I think I'm I've started being a lot more authentic in life and it's so refreshing if somebody ask me like questions right I'm like yeah that is me now am I hurting you if I'm not hurting you it's my business yeah yeah as long as I'm being true to me no no agree secondly maybe when I was much younger I used to be judgmental if he's like this he has to be like this ter stereotype but I think now I'm totally out judgment I don't judge anybody by whatever he's wearing or whatever he's he a to say something I can see I can see the lips Mo but the sound not coming up no no no no I I I agree a bit with Kish I I still find myself judging too much yeah and I think you have to consciously avoid it I think you I was a lot judgmental crazy okay got it it and I feel like that's the thing to inculcate and encourage people to do is stop judging yeah yeah agree everybody like you know agree everybody's constantly judging and taking joy and pulling other people down or like you have opinion great but you know yeah yeah but I think and the other thing I like what you mentioned which is you do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else don't care right I mean if you're causing harm then it's different but otherwise I think it shouldn't matter interesting thought coming back to Raj okay sorry for digressing continue what was that telling you were talking about different Indian Brands right so we as I tell you okay what was cool for us till now okay as I was growing up American movies American sports stars and American brands because they were limited they were not accessible they were like you know you don't see all of your friends wearing Jordan at one point you don't see all everybody driving German cars everybody wearing a certain level of let's say European watches and stuff like that but you can't say that I can say that no actually I can't see that Kishore can say that we saw the world kind of come out of socialism hyen communism being cool to becoming uncool Russians can say that the Chinese can say that because they were oppressed for a certain amount of time and they're overcompensating for a period of time but I think India largely has been open since the '90s right I tell you more than '90s is like the where I've been born and brought up oh my city my neighborhood got it there was I don't remember in like 300 houses in my my Colony there even one guy had like a BMW I remember when we were growing up in my school I was the coolest guy in 12th class that's 12th when I bought a fast track so because I come from that I'm not talking about larger India I'm just talking about my upbringing in a way I came up we used to look at other people and then as my so now my brother started going my brother studied in UK so I was I didn't study there he studied there so he got exposed to all of this and then he started getting exposed to all of this and he started telling us about all of these things I started following I started finding now these little things online and I was like Wow even I Like It by I think there's an opportunity since we're talking about brands in Indian luxury I think uh you know five years I would prefer an Indian luxury I think there is yeah and I think there is me ethnic or do you mean no no I think Indian luxury I don't mean ethnic right I think there's an opportunity for handcrafting for luxury um I think across a range of C atories I think you know 5 years ago 7even years ago I would have said no but I think now there's a lot of meaning people want to actually have some sense of origin in place I don't think you can build a very large business may but I think you can certainly build a very interesting brand I and would you say somebody should sell that through the lens of patriotism CU that could work it could work I don't I don't know about patriotism no I think luxury you should not sell with patriotism not at all but I think Artisans and all that you can do I don't knowm or not but Artis also very diff but artisan and storytelling is now you're supporting a larger cause not patriotismo is like a very very different uh emotion no but you're saying Made in India right is that something that I think I think the first brand which is being built in luxury is sabya yeah and if you look at the new store Ultra he owned a culture I think it's very interesting I think so because he owned culture no no and I think he's taken a global I mean the New York store I mean it's like quite interesting so I think there is an opportunity here for sure but that's ethnic I'm talking about but he's doing a lot of uh other products also if you look at his bags also think so yeah jewelry I think see I think there's a I mean but there is a story there so all of these Brands if you look at luxury Brands they built around culture if you pick on that culture and then sell a story it SS okay influencer Brands what else to keep in mind say I'm starting a brand in cosmetics I want to partner with say actor X Y whatever what should I look look out for in the actor which should resonate with the product I'm building and how do I go about it what do I watch out for what will work for me first you have to okay so write down so you have completely escaped the c y category y product you've chosen that no tell me that was so first you said why you it has to be additional it can't be replacement it can't be at a price lower than what is available in the market right now it has to be at a slightly higher price because it has to feel like upgrade yes what else so apart from that now how you go about choosing a celebrity or an influencer I think first you should choose people who are at the Tipping Point not really big not small because if you build like if you build with number one yeah there's no way going up like it's just there's someone number two number three number five waiting to replace that right right so for example if you want to build with verat kohley I don't think this is the right time it was like he's already he's already at a peak I think you should build it with someone this is my theory it can be shill kind of guy you should build it with that y because they are on a Tipping Point so you're betting for because as they grow your brand will also grow is there a number you can attach to social media influence let's say for example Virat kohi has 100 million followers on Instagram more than number I would say so okay don't go with anyone who's under million let's just see put that okay right if you want to build it but more than that what really matters is do they have a potential to go to let's say 50 million or 20 million or 15 million doesn't matter you catch them at 1 million or 5 million or 8 million do they have potential to go 10x from here is the question that you should be asking and how do you gauge that so there are couple of signs one is Tipping Point based on how fast they have gotten to where they' have gotten second is is there a signs of repeating what they're doing so for example let's say pick up a musician or an artist right if somebody's like hey I sing from my soul and heart and I do this you know that you have to go deeper and talk to this guy like at a certain level to figure out because soul and heart is not going to work for long right right it definitely work you need to have that eventually but does this guy understand science behind spreading the music the way it spreads example right that's the so do they understand the science and the craft of what they're doing so that they can do it at scale with larger people that's first thing that you figure out second is are there establishments pumping money on them so for example if there's a musician think are there global music brands or labels putting massive money on them or no or if there is like a mainstream YouTuber are there larger consumer Brands who have made them brand ambassadors or putting money on them because what happens these guys will like these larger establishments will pump money and make your small influencer larger influencer put in up front so you don't end up putting that much money on them so that's the second and the most third is the emotion that they stand for every Creator every celebrity has some kind of emotion in their in their PR story if it's Shah ruk Khan It's like success story and love if it's about let's say talk about 10 gamers they're 10 gamers playing 10 games and playing same games at the same time but they all have different communities because one would stand for RX to Rich Story one would stand for humor Story one would stand for adventure and being just like a very wild Creator so you need to catch on a specific emotion and then map that emotion with the brand that you're creating so these are the first three signs that you pick on before you choose a celebrity and then the fourth and the most important thing which is that do these Creator want to build brand with you and they think that brand is going to be as significant in their life as their music career or their influencer career is or not because if they see you as somebody that hey I'm going to treat it as a brand endorsement I'll just come today and do it can you can you summarize this for us I'm a new guy creating a new brand I have 50 l rupes to start a brand let's say Cosmetics three main points I would look to find the right partner who is a popular person influencer first if they're asking you for money don't work with them okay only share equity and only Equity right only Equity don't do anything because if they're asking for money they're te technically downsizing their risk you don't want to work with that partner pick them before they become really popular yes okay pick them before they're really popular third is choose on the emotion like what are the people talking about what is their emotion what do they stand for what are the certain level of pattern they've built okay so if you look at Shah ruk Khan he'll only play movies where he's emotionally available for women that's like a pattern that he's picked up interesting right so everybody has this pattern yeah that's third then the most important thing that becomes really important when you're working with an influencer is are there more people creating content on them like are there enough fan pages and community creating content on them right if they are only creating content and that's only getting out in the world it's technically not that that great of an influencer to work with because you need people who announce something who write about them so you need someone who just talks about something and then there are fan pages and communities and other people to create content on them they say you are a great Creator right people create content on you so that's a picking up on that so you need to pick up on that and I'll add the last layer of uh influencer Leed Brands can your influencer organically create content which doesn't look like sales around the product that you're building with them because if your creator has to come up and be like hey buy my water bottle and in their entire life they've never talked about water or bottle yeah you to be consistent it's just going to be it's going to be bad yeah you know I I just as an as on on topic on this I actually once had the chance to meet Chris jenno um and the Kardashians just during my menra days you have a parallel life with Thea and Kardashians and all that right no no it's all businessman I mean I don't have any time for socializing so anyway I met met them um pretentious signaling signaling not pretentious um I'm I'm going to live with my signaling and own my signaling right um so uh it's very interesting I think your fourth point or maybe the third point was the most biggest thing I think I don't think they did any of this consistent y all of that but they knew the engagement level of their followers and they knew the number of followers and they knew they wanted to build a business that would last beond them I don't know whether there's a certain mindset of an influencer which I think is perhaps the most important for success I think you know for example a Ric right wanted to build a legacy I think wanted to build something I don't know if that I mean maybe the equity part is the part that sort of makes that come alive but for me I think getting that right more than anything else makes this successful right I think that's why they' built such large brand because you need to understand your community right because Kim Kardashian understood her shape where was the most talked about that's why she started understood her lips were the biggest thing that was Cosmetics each of them and the and how do you how do you recognize these Trends in the market like it's constantly changing right like all these women were very volumptuous at one point now they're skinny like the needs and the trends that sell in a market are constantly changing so if I'm starting a brand today how do I recognize that Trend where do I look at it is it a top down funnel should I look at the Kardashians see what they're doing and build a brand around that or would that be ahead of its time I think we have to keep our eyes and ears open and you have to follow anything which is getting popular I think so yeah and you'll always find something or the other would it be fair to say what the Kardashians are doing now will be popular in India in ex am of I don't I don't know I don't think so right I eventually we didn't bring them to India because I don't think it actually appealed right so I think it has to be local to your market for sure the bief system is different everywhere so I don't think like what works there work right right any other insights influencer please what else how much Equity do you give them depends like so we start at we start at 50 to somewhere like around 10 to 20% depending on the amount of time they no no no depending on the category and the investment which will be required for us to build it versus what they bring on table and they only put time no Capital obviously they don't put Capital so they share the but the sharing is on the profit level not on any licensing any royalty nothing else so there's no percentage of Revenue that they get blah blah blah Etc if the brand makes money it makes money or you otherwise you don't get okay he's done a perfume cooker no perfume mixer and the third one is no we're doing beauty Beauty and each of those brands are selling two cres no no not right now uh third brand is getting launched in October what first and two together they're doing around 2 2.5 which is launched like 3 four months ago yeah yeah we're very it's great but I'm saying but but the interesting thing is it's really when the brand makes money you get some portion of the profit not otherwise and you give them only equity and this very tricky like we have a fund around consumption and you know it's called Collective gruh house and we were looking at stats of popular people who launched Brands yeah we were looking at let me not name her but one very popular actress with over 5050 million followers who launched a certain brand recently it only sold like a few hundred so I don't think it's the popularity that is key it is the combination of all these factors manactor plus there's a big thing versus being known and being influ like you have an influencing power versus being known no no and that's one the second is what I was earlier saying right I think you have to separate Out product price value proposition from influence I think you cannot sell I mean even to India one right I mean you cannot sell something very what they don't want so I think your assortment and this has to be left to I wouldn't say professional but at least some experts right so we had we had we had a very interesting in our earlier economy on WE us Sachin as a brand ambassador yeah we created a brand uh along but Sachin brand represented his childhood and every mother or parents wanted somebody to be like suchin that was the brand Essence on which we worked it didn't work as much we worked with J hon Mar it worked phenomenally well all the foreign stars then we had dhoni I think that was just phenomenal yeah and very early days when he had long hairs which b b b we created a whole Campaign which brand was this fbb okay fashion big Bazar fashion baz so we changed our name that time with doni yeah and we continued with vun daan right Katrina so it's been a journey but M was uh not many misses we like we used to take two stars one from the east or east and one from the north so we used beha right because in in India today to launch a brand a d2c brand you need two stars one from the south and one from the north kishor's daughter is building some incredible Brands would you like to talk a little bit about it cuz people watch look it up I I think they're in the journeying but would you like to see like they are a company which they're building is a venture Builder Okay so they building Ventures 0 to one everything is 0 to one and they build around nine Ventures which is your two favorites amongst the nine which are your two I think there is a new one which is coming up which is going to be a new lifestyle space for the new age Brands influencers creators it's a new departmental store what is it called it's going to be called Broadway oh so it's a department it's a live theater it's a FNB it's a supermarket it's a beauty store how interesting experience you can experience you can we are starting live Commerce there yeah and uh there's a makers lab you can show your product is being made there is a Content Studio everything is ticketed 10 events a day big events there's definitely opportunity for you two to collaborate somewhere so that's the first to which we are I think that's that's looking second favorite I think second favorite is uh uh the smart sters as a brand Master as a brand yeah because we went into through furniture and now getting into other categories and how do you go about acquiring the client then I think the same what physical digital all together I don't believe in that theory of 0 to 20 20 to 50 50 to 100 I don't believe in that theory I believe brand has to be right the positioning has to be right and uh you have to keep on acquiring customers keep on learning on the way if your brand is wrong nothing is going to go right the one thing like I have a point of contention on like by the time this comes out this deal will probably be done but we're doing blue stone so like me ranan and sanjie bani are doing it together what worked incredibly well for them is when they were online only they plateaued at a certain point and they had to get to offline too SC the minute they went to offline yes they scaled by a crazy Factor right work for blue stone did not say for example work for Nika Nika's stores did not work so can I tell you the difference in my mind one is a brand the other is a platform I think they two very different things in my view uh by the way I fundamentally believe I think that more than 100 crores without offline it's very hard to sort of build over time I think we've talked about this earlier in the carrot carrot Lane Blue Stone I think even more important because the asps the price points are very high therefore you need even more I think um if you're a platform and not a single brand then by the way platforms work on traffic and choice Brands by the way you're establishing through this offline you're establishing trust you're establishing touch and feel can we talk about that a little bit do platforms work today of course they do yeah of course they do I mean minra naika Amazon all are platforms right they of course they work they aggregate what do platforms do they've spent money to aggregate traffic and their brand stands for something mintra I you know is is great brands at great prices right Nika I think is around Beauty and now of course extending into other categories like fashion Etc but I think they've established a loyal set of customers who keep coming back regularly for Choice okay if I were to if I were to switch it up we spoke about 0o to one if you're creating a brand if you're a investor looking at platforms how would you value them multiple wise would you look at gmv would you look at sales sales net sales and how what multiple would you attribute again depends on the category and the profitability a lot of them are going so broad that they all are becoming the same no no no I think there's a vertical versus a horizontal right I mean verticals are people who focus on one sector versus not right see look I mean I think eventually the question is can you make a ton of money I mean I think you know you can't get away from free cash flows right at some level so the question that you have to believe at some level for a platform is at what percentage market share can you start to make real money M right and that varies right in Amazon in the US it took 20 years or whatever I forget the exact number of years before it started generating money so I think that's how you'll start to have to Value I think it's a little bit more not your current cash flows it has to be some projection of future cashow even if you were to leave cash flows cuz very few of them have positive cash flows if you were to look at a net sales multiple would you say like we discussed earlier you said for 4 to 6X is what roughly the range for Beauty and Fashion forat no no not for platforms I'm saying this was we discussed for Brands yeah obviously do you think o DC kind of things are a threat to platforms no I think ondc can be maybe in the long I think they're not a threat to platforms I think they can unlock smaller players in terms of selling right smaller brands in terms of selling because it allows you to have direct access what has a platform done platform has spent all its money on traffic and brand right onc doesn't solve the problem onc disaggregates the different parts of e-commerce right I think it's very useful I do think o n DC can add value to Brands I'm not sure there are replacement to platforms what I think will happen if you were to ask me like I no expert in this field interesting to hear I think the margins like when I value a platform play onc I think will drive down the margins of platforms considerably got it cuz I might not take the Arbitrage if the price difference is 5% but if the price difference is paying 30% on flip cart versus 5% on n DC I think a lot of people by virtual word of mouth will go for it and another very like Cardinal question I missed is different platforms have different business models like Amazon has a warehouse where they'll stock and then Supply and all of that let's say for example uh Nika has a different one Flipkart has a different one what model is working today and what will work tomorrow so there are sort of fundamentally two models just to simplify this I maybe I'll take this as as an e platform question um one is what's called a pure play marketplace right a pure play Marketplace purely connects buyers and sellers the inventory sits with the brand and the brand ships it out to the customer that's one model yeah the other model is what is called fulfilled by the platform you can have fulfilled by Amazon fulfilled by flip cart Etc there the inventory physically sits in a Flipkart Warehouse or a mintra warehouse or an Amazon warehouse right these are the broadly the two different models what works well for what depends on volume and value if you're selling gardening equipment or if you're selling anything which is bulky then going through an Amazon or a Flipkart model where it's in their warehouse is always cheaper because they can get it to all parts of India they can get it to you faster Etc if you're selling a fashion product maybe doing a pure play Marketplace from your own is fine because you can still get it to them it doesn't cost you that much more so it's purely economics driven I think in my mind so it's volume value ratio right if you had 1 CR RUP and you had to build a brand today I'm going to go through each one of you what would you do where do you see the opportunity how would you do it like give me a 30 second answer can you start from them I want to know they like would you like like uh my background has been clothing and all other categories I would I would look at opportunity in two places one is household wees uh to create a brand out there household we be home decor not home decor I would say anything which goes into home the cutlery the Crockery and household I think that's a interesting product category which I people keep the they buy quite often in a way that uh there are new designs which can be created you can enter this Market easily through new design sensibilities or through something else another thing which I would do will be in fashion try to do at least 10 12 stock tons in whatever you design towards if figure your differentiation what would it be like uh maybe a a single color a brand which only does one color one color that's very interesting what color would that be he's already done right it's Kingdom of white yeah so but white might be done there might be so many other colors there there are many options you can do a particular fabric you can do a particular thing but I'm again looking at longetivity whatever you do right like black I think is an incredi yeah could be right okay you're done uh I would um I would do pets what around pets um I would do accessories for pets as opposed to food I think accessories you mean like leashes pet cleaning pet grooming I think it's a market with high gross margins you can create differentiated products I think it's a tenure sort of growth story the other area I would think about um is actually at leisure uh I still think there's lots and lots and lots of space I think my Bliss Club is trying to do Club is doing it with with its yeah so um yeah so I think there is one but I think there are many that can actually happen and I think it's a trend that I think and I would like to it's an interesting one to incubate can I tell you I'm a Lululemon fanatic okay I'm talking socks t-shirts pants underwear bags caps everything uh it's like Nike Plus 25% if you buy it in the US or in Canada or whatever whatever I have tried like which wants to be like Lululemon nothing has come close not forget CL standpoint or just just from a comfort comfort and fit like Lululemon has no branding right they never have a logo or anything you even pull out their tag so there's no tag even the entire thing is I feel like how you can move in that fabric how you can sweat in that fabric how how light and comfortable that fabric feels like I wish I had stock unfortunately I have zero stock of Lululemon but it's like a $40 billion company now how can anyone ever compete with them if they have that much resources and money to make better fabric better fit better everything but the longitude of any fashion business is not so large because you are as good as your last season in a in a fashion business but is that fashion or is it fashion plus Tech I think fashion plus tech there are two players who have played it maybe Lulu Lemon some somebody n and unigo I think they and both very successful and both have been quite successful but but Tech earlier never used to work in fashion but I think another thing to tell people is sorry I have just one thing just on that just I I by the way think um you don't need to compete with the Lululemon I think there is again in India one there are multiple segments I think the Lulu segment is probably living in the building and like a few other buildings and so on right I mean they're aware Global brand you know I don't think it's particularly expensive but I think it is something that is still premium it's like Nike I think a t-shirt will be 4 5,000 rupees Nike Plus 30% Nike plus 30 is okay fine I mean it's not available widely here either anyway so but I think there is an affordable athleisure that I think even the Bliss clubs what is bliss Club known for I think it's fit right and and therefore fit in a following I think it's possible to crack fit I actually think Indian body types are different by the way so I think if you build an Indian athesia brand you can build it for India you can build the fits right I think the fabric technology I mean Kish knows this better but I think it's widely available I mean you have to go Global but I think it's widely a I feel it's like a science like just making a Lululemon say shirt or t-shirt the way it feels it could be Placebo talking like I might be like talking out of my here but it genuinely sold out yeah correct cortic and I think he is following more because it's a $40 million company more than I find very interesting like but the stock price of the fit or both both I feel like Patagonia Lululemon these are Brands which are built around stories and I think these lifestyle created a lifestyle no no and even Patagonia right I mean what a great story where I mean he donated all of his shareholding to I feel like that's becoming such a big part of building a brand and I think anyone that's what we always said now greed fear and altruism alism builds a brand yeah 0 to one I think has to like so bear in mind with what he just said cuz that story has to start from the beginning to the end it can't change along the way interesting we have an interesting brand now which is like idfc Bank where the stories about alism yeah correct correct correct Vio yeah yeah vioo even Tas in a way yeah Raj I would build men's Beauty brand uh and I C new category it's it's growing I think men are equally insecure about how they want to look or maybe just want to in improve the way they want to have their under eye or the or like you know just hide their duck SPS blemish everything and I think there's not enough there are not enough Brands to do it uh that's why is that more except can I ask this question because there is I don't know that many men who wear makeup like I probably don't even know one but there is such a stigma around a man wearing makeup would you package it in a manner where it does not sound like makeup yeah so here's a way to do it right if I come and give you that hey here's buy let's say XYZ concealer and stuff like that and this you put it under your eye you do it probably large majority of men would buy today but if I come up with a different form and just be like this is going to sort your under eye and don't call it like concealer or something what would you call it I don't know like it's not in back of my head like I can't think of it but I'll think of it like problem solution as problem it's just it's like under eyes the problem yours it is functionality functionality functionality so that's what because I think there's not enough brand would you get a celebrity who's the epitome of masculinity to sell something like this so because I do most of the Creator and celebrity lead I would in this because there's such a fresh category I would rather pick up on people who are normal just like me than celebrities and build on their stories for example for example I'll give this to 100 people for free ask their reviews and make their reviews as a story like this is the new thing for men as well and which influencer would you pick I would do very micro influencers I would do 100 small influencers then like become like a big in is that a new trend in branding like would you go to thousands of micro versus macro yeah absolutely because this is in this category I'm not selling aspiration in this category I'm solving a problem so if there was an aspiration or a community play probably I would have picked up on a larger influencer but because I'm only picking up on a problem and solution because the category doesn't exist you have to to invest a lot in category building and category creation yeah then I'll do it I have investment in a company called kluen which is probably the leading Tech of aggregating micro micro influencers is with Quan no no no kluen is with Sham and Hyderabad oh sham yeah yeah of course of course correct correct I'll tell you this ecosystem has changed so much I think the influencer ecosystem right so such a spike with gambling money crypto money all of that suddenly there seems to be like a vacuum which has come about there there is a re uh reworking of the ladder of how much which influencer gets paid which is going to be so drastically different from last year it's chaos in that industry Confluence by far is the best in my opinion but I think that industry needs a fresh funnel like yesterday yeah of people spending marketing money behind it micro influencers yeah yeah definitely in fact there was a survey recently that that you get convinced by your friends the most friends and family second you get convinced by people who you follow but are not that known yeah and third you get convinced by influencers the celebrity in this comes like sixth or seventh number and somehow people have this stupid notion that the efficacy of Indian neutal will be lesser than foreign ones somebody has to break that correct so if somebody creates a brand there it has to be around proven effic efficacy I think efficacy has to be the key and I think there's a very interesting opportunity there as well I think for sure anyway if I had I just remembered something if I had to create a brand today I think it would be around seniors yeah we spoke about it yeah yeah seniors and I think interesting there is somebody working on it already and I feel like the influences I would hire would also be old people who are still relevant y that is one of the new consumer groups we have identified in the new top 30 very interesting by the way I think it's an opportunity I it's a opportunity that not many people are to give all their and not competitive no they are not wanting to give all their wealth to the children they want to enjoy life right so they have ability to pay it's not particularly competitive interesting one point of failure when you were starting a Brand 0 to one that happened that you think other people can learn from what not to do one common reason why brand starting or fail I think we did uh I think in my journey we counted we did close to 120 brands or labels or whatever you call it yeah and uh I would say we must have got 20 wrong and whenever we analyze what went wrong was uh the name the type style the logo what do you call it the what do you call the brand codes the category codes being wrong and product and the pricing so these were all the reasons for if you had to pick the top reason I think it's sometimes the just the name wow wow the name is incredibly Valu and the logo name and logo yeah wow anath thinking um I think uh for me I think when we have compromised quality for Speed of launch it's been bad right so for example you have a deadline to launch right you need to sort of but I believe that's all hygiene product has to be right only no no but I'm saying by the way you know it's my failure we're talking about not yours fair enough so I think uh you know my sense is for me I think it is a little bit more of you know product quality I think we are soon reaching 4:00 yeah it's getting well beyond my bedtime so I think uh it's basically for me when we've compromised on quality um not quality but whatever right all the small details some shortcuts yeah shortcuts right you know you've not got the fit completely right you have not got the packaging completely right and you sort of push for Speed right I think that's actually been and it the consequences last for a very long time right you don't realize it but I think therefore taking the time to do it is is important one mistake I think I'll go with more of when you start as a solo founder and you have just two three people eventually I think very very basic thing I'm going to tell like I think we should prepare a checklist and go through that checklist every month of hygienic details giving you exam I made a major mistake when first time I started selling on Amazon just the tax I chose luxury good instead of essential yeah we spoke about this just I mine I was selling essential Goods I was selling disinfectant sprays Y and I chose luxury goods and that costed me 22% right GST GST and there was 22% I mean it changes no like I can change it after once I figured out but the the cycle is so long I figured out after 3 months I ended up losing a lot of money and made nothing in fact like so my profit was on that was 12 to 133% I lost 10% so that was a problem so I think you should make a checklist like a hygiene of 20 30 things and go through that every month so that if even if you're making some mistake you can correct it next month specifically when you're starting very individual solo lean team yeah because there are no checklist we don't know struct sure right is like we just want to do everything right yeah okay so the last part we normally do a charity with every episode we thought we'll do it differently as a experiment this time so in all that we spoke about we will pick an entrepreneur in either fashion or Cosmetics or any of the industries we discussed who would otherwise not have got funding and we will fund by virtue of this podcast okay uh under the age of 22 under the age of 222 some young entrepreneur for this particular episode so I mean I want to open it up to you guys and we'll figure out the filtering mechanism we'll put out an application we will review and finalize together which company that should be sure uh but I'm saying specifically 22 because these guys find it much harder to raise funding okay typically in college side project they're not uh at zero but they're in the Journey of zero to one essentially sure finding young people when he started like yeah yeah like him like you you know in the last we find somebody like that in the last episode we had the zepto guys and you know the one thing they said that was so incredibly cool is they got a grant of 40 lakhs from this fund when they were 18 and that's what helped them build zpp to amazing yeah so we'll figure out an investment between all of this we'll finalize is there amount of money you'd like to commit towards that investment you can decide on everybody's behalf now I can also whatever yeah just pick a number so we can just close it um I don't know 10 lakhs 20 lakhs yeah whatever same whatever yeah I'll do the same same I'll do the 10 should we do 10 10 10 10 40 will be enough yeah zepto started with 40 LS it's not yeah Z start 40 okay fine all right but I'm I think it's a great idea I never thought about it I think under 22 would be quite an interesting finding would be so hard finding is also going to be hard right so we'll put out an application okay we'll have some preset filters okay we'll bring it down to say 10 15 companies which are finalized then we'll do a zoom call between the four of us and pick one of them very interesting terrific and I think it's a great idea to help those people who would not have gotten funding otherwise in fact uh it's it's interesting an alternate to a charity yeah yeah so in fact Maybe much better also should we do a larger amount so it'll be game changing we can do we can do two whatever or we can do two companies so should we do 20 lakhs each and two companies 40 lakhs yeah that's much better yeah I think it'll increase the probability also done and we will ask them to incorporate we can also ask them to incorporate all they learned on this episode there going to be a long many hours session of insights they can learn from yeah but that's it thank you all for coming great thank you and and uh look forward to having you guys again soon thank you it was [Music] great can we cut this session I think he's going to promote that section so are you um going to be around for a few days you're leaving tomor tomorrow morning how long are you here tomorrow morning we all commuted yeah I came down I live I'm the shortest commute of the Lord best design your life in a way that so just out of your 11 episode history right are be more efficient less this is going to be the toughest to cut though okay yeah I seem to be the only one like we could go like 3 3 and 1 half hours yeah 3 and 1 half hours no way