The Exchanges

Q And so how would you rate, you know, the last 10 years of finance ministry on various parameters?

A I think, uh, you, you have to look at it in the first five years, I would say that, uh, the era of reforms, uh, you had, uh, the GST, you had, uh, the The bankruptcy code in 2016. Uh, even you had the real estate, uh, regulatory authority. Uh, you had, uh, by and large a resolution of the Vodafone tax crisis. So I would say, and, and, and taxation, tax rates being, being, uh, being rationalized, you know. So that is the era of sync. The second phase, uh, began, uh, very promisingly with reduction in corporation tax rate. Ah, and, ah, new tarot taxes regime. Ah, but unfortunately COVID came in, and COVID was a, was a century, one in century kind of a crisis. But I would say that the finance ministry handled the COVID crisis very competently, and did not use government resources far too in excess to, to destroy fiscal balance of the economy, of the government. Uh, so, so you have handled the economy well. Uh, you have kept the fiscal deficit, even though it is slightly wide, you have kept the fiscal deficit under control. Uh, it is, uh, uh, it is, growth is been purely investment led. Uh, probably now that the COVID is behind us, uh, finance ministry now will have to go back. To a new phase of factor market reforms, many other reforms that are waiting to be done. GST too is, is waiting to be implemented because GST is right now it is state where you've got multiple rates. Your pe…

AI assessment note: “I think, uh, you, you have to look at it in the first five years”

Q So what's your experience been for the last 10 years working with a current prime minister?

A So the prime minister is, ah, very outcome driven. He is, ah, extremely delivery oriented. He's a big picture man, and I think he's a very big techie at heart. So, uh, I've seen him drive Uh, the digital transformation of India, and he'd once asked me to do a hundred digital melas in a hundred days, and I thought that was very difficult. And, uh, but he was very insistent. But when I look back at it, those hundred days enabled us to drive the digitization of India. Similarly, he made us do many presentations before we started the startup India movement. I think one first time, second time, third time, fourth time, but he, he looks, he breaks down silos. And he looks at a very multidisciplinary perspective. So he said, don't look at it only from your department's viewpoint. Look at it from the viewpoint of creating incubators. Look at it from the viewpoint of IITs, IIMs, engineering colleges. Look at it from the viewpoint of the rules, regulations. Look at it from the viewpoint of venture capital. All perspectives were taken into consideration before the startup India policy was announced. But once he announces the policy, then he leaves it to you and he wants you to deliver. Then he's very, very outcome oriented. Similarly, the aspirational district program, we made many presentations to him. Then he said, ah, his views were very clear that we have to transform lives of citizen…

AI assessment note: “the prime minister is, ah, very outcome driven. He is, ah, extremely delivery oriented.”

Q When you used to face such doubts openly from your seniors, did you come and share it with your husband who helped you, you know, get self belief back? Or was it, was it just that you need to prove yourself determination?

A At that time, my husband was not with me. Uh, he was in another subdivision that was in Ranchi. I was in Patna. But the only thing I think which held me was my own determination, and even though the DG's office was, you know, pushing me back, my senior SP and the DIG under whom I was trained, they were very keen to train me, and they made me do everything which a male police officer is supposed to do. So, there they did not distinguish between a male and a Um, female officer. And I'm really grateful to my DIG and to my senior SP who put everything in front of me and said that this is what you have to do. This is what you have to do. And they expected me, they would supervise my work quite closely. And I think they also took it as a mission to train me. And I was of course, determined to learn everything. I was determined to learn anything. So didn't, I didn't shirk anything.

AI assessment note: “the only thing I think which held me was my own determination”

Q Well, and, and tell us about, you know, you mentioned that, uh, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav as a chief minister, uh, your first stint working with him, what was the experience like over a period of time?

A So, I worked under him from 91 to 94, from 91 to 92 not so directly because I was just there and I was an SP in the intelligence branch, but from 92 to 94 I was DIG Patna and that was the time when I was directly because you know, so many things are happening in Patna and he would issue instructions, keep telling you to do things and that time I felt that he was a, He brought a new kind of thinking. He was very hands-on. He was everywhere. Earlier, I had not seen a chief minister arriving at a crime spot, arriving to handle a law and order situation. He was like that. And even giving instructions. When I was posted in the, in Bokaro steel plant, I don't remember the chief minister, even if he arrived, Uh, he would be sitting and discussing that what are the exact things which have to be done. After the anti-Sikh riots, the chief minister was Mr. Chandrasekhar Singh. He was a very good, uh, chief minister. He came and his idea was to put like a bomb. He told me that I had done a good job and the people were happy and that I should keep doing this. It was like that. But, uh, Mr. Lalu Prasad would come and say, yeh bhi hona chahiye, yeh bhi hona chahiye, yaise hona chahiye. It was like that. And I felt that, uh, he was not asking me to do anything wrong. He, whatever he was telling me was like a way of advice and very down to earth advice.

AI assessment note: “He was very hands-on. He was everywhere. Earlier, I had not seen a chief minister”

Q So, what is the ratio of online and offline in this time?

A Now, the majority of business is online. Now, our 70% business is online. Offline, we started about five months ago. And, uh, we started from Bangalore. We set up four stores in Bangalore. Uh, when we were starting, at that point, our thesis was clear that we wouldn't go into more cities. We would live in limited cities, but we would go deep. Yeah. Because what we realized is, we wanted to solve for our marketing costs. And when you go to marketing performance and branding, that's on your city level. You took a place in airports, or you would go to cinemas. It's all on city level. It's all on your specific level. So, that's why our marketing efficiency, marketing ROI, will focus on that city. So, that's why we took two cities in Bangalore and Delhi. And there, we put five stores in the first go. And we went very deep there. And then, we did a lot of marketing, BTL activation, branding activities to create awareness. Uh, in the cities.

AI assessment note: “Now, our 70% business is online. Offline, we started about five months ago.”

Q And from your town, many folks had gone before you to DPSRK Puram?

A Maybe three, four. I mean, at best, the person who would be the topper of class 10th in our school, in one out of two, three years, that person will have enough marks that they can probably get admitted into DPSRK Puram. But that was all that people knew about the future of education. I was fortunate enough to get decent marks in class 10th. And that's how I showed up, showed up at DPS Arkhiparam. It is after coming here that I realized what is IIT, ah, then I realized that, okay, if to go to an IIT, most people go to a coaching class. Then I've asked around in DPS, found a coaching class which you're supposed to go to, try to get admitted into one Vidya Mandir, right? Vidya Mandir.

AI assessment note: “Maybe three, four. I mean, at best, the person who would be the topper”

Q But subconsciously, there was always the desire to educate others in you when, even when you were growing?

A No, honestly, I never thought about that, to be honest. Uh, however, now when I look back, My parents were very involved in doing things for others. So my father was the secretary of the Harijan Sevaksang and the Harijan Sevaksang used to run balwadis. One balwadi used to actually run next to our home in a garage for the local children. So I remember being part of all of that. I didn't realize what we were doing. I was too young to appreciate, one, the need for it, and the fact that we were imparting education. My mother was involved in many women's organizations, the All India Women's Conference, the Bihar Council of Women. So she would be constantly fundraising, organizing things, going to villages, selling items knitted by the women in the villages, or helping them get loans to Uh, get a cow that would help, you know, I guess this is before the help, the days of self-help groups and so on. So these women's organizations was very, were very active. My father was very active. Uh, we were very active in the village that we come from. Uh, even though we were living in the city, we were very closely connected with rural Bihar. So there was a lot of, uh, if you would want to call it social work going on in the family. Which I think may have informed my desire to then later in life give back. And I think again that inspiration did come from my parents.

AI assessment note: “No, honestly, I never thought about that, to be honest.”

Q When you and Rajat were initially thinking of setting up ISB inside IIT Delhi, there's a story that, you know, there were so many constraints that it couldn't have been set up inside IIT Delhi. You have to shift it to an independent, uh, autonomous, uh, university, right? So, so how did, uh, Chandra Babu Naidu came to know about it because it was a private affair, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. So there's a little bit of cheating going on. So what was happening was that I was at McKinsey at that time, and I had worked on this project in Malaysia, which was on the economic development of Malaysia. So Chandra Babu Naidu had visited Malaysia And heard from Mahathir that McKinsey had worked on creating a vision, 20, 20 for Malaysia. So when he came back, he tried to get in touch with McKinsey. And so to cut a long story short, now I was with McKinsey here in India, working on the Andhra Pradesh vision, 20, 20. Now, even though we were working with the state and we were doing a lot to attract investment into the state, honestly, in the early days of that, in parallel, I was working on ISB.

AI assessment note: “working on the Andhra Pradesh vision, 20, 20... in parallel, I was working on ISB.”

Q I think that's one of the reasons why you're not selling ready-made idlis, right?

A Yeah, so the, so we are not selling ready-made idli and those are for reason. Yeah. What I have learned is A homemaker is a gatekeeper for the kitchen. It can be he or she decides what to feed for the family. Yeah. Now, if I sell idli, he or she is not willing to accept this on a regular basis because they feel the goodness of adding their value, adding their last touch. So we sell better. They take the batter, customize to their taste. Some, somebody wanted to ferment it more, lesser fermented, all of them possible. They, they can customize. Add their ingredients on top of it. Like some of my wife add onion in it, make it to the pump.

AI assessment note: “if I sell idli, he or she is not willing to accept this”

Q And why, why, how did we forgot it?

A I'll give you a simple example. In our area where we operate, Tiptur, ok, When in the year, like mad people, we got out of Wipro and we told, we will change the world. First thing we did was, we did a baseline survey of Tiptur belt, coconut, what's happening. It's a big copra belt, sweet copra belt in India. And when we surveyed, what the revelation is very damning. Coconut tree was producing 55 nuts per tree per annum. That was the survey data. Government data exactly matches with that. Then, we were extremely curious what it was a hundred years back. A hundred years back, 19 not three and 19 not five, there are two British day surveys pegged the coconut yield in that area at 185 nuts per tree per annum. So what happened in hundred years? So to your question, this is what happened. We economized everything. Other quadrant I was mentioning, we sold the coconut, we sold the coir pit, we sold the leaf fronds, we sold everything and economized. But diversity of managing soil, we forgot. We didn't take care of the soil. In hundred years of farming, a coconut tree which was yielding 185 nuts per tree per annum, at an average, we have bought it down to 55 nuts. That is our contribution of farming. Ecological dimension is forgotten. Other aspect in the farming, the fourth aspect is, Diversification of, ok, um, your income streams. You should have dairy. You should have poultry. You sh…

AI assessment note: “We economized everything... But diversity of managing soil, we forgot.”

Q Which are the three to four companies that are lined up for IPO in the next 12 months or 16 months in your portfolio?

A So hopefully we'll see Lending Cart and Sugar first. Uh, there's a company called Okter. It's a home automation. They build these, uh, Paytm sound boxes, the profitable company, electronics outsourcing, uh, maybe in 18 months, they'll go, uh, a little bit later and, uh, maybe in 36 months, we are hoping for ShareChat. Uh, there are other considerations around ShareChat and IPO, but they'll be ready to, you know, they have already like a hundred million, Plus, uh, revenue run rate, uh, will break even in 12 months. So we'll be ready, but we'll probably might take a little longer, you know, more stable revenues in there. Uh, these are the companies that I envisage right now. Uh, but, uh, already because we have a few, we have sort of tasted blood already as to how good IPOs can be for some of which ones you have tested blood, for example. We tasted blood in the sense of, uh, where our series B companies need to go, right? So because I know sugar and lending card are so close, I'm already prepping Jeeva, for example, he's like very aligned. He's saying, no, no, I understood the formula now, not going to raise a lot of capital. I will not burn a lot. I don't want to grow beyond natural profitable growth. And this is a company which is already like, you know, sizable revenue. And, uh, they're like, no, no, we'll go for IPO. And maybe again, three years, the founder is aiming for an …

AI assessment note: “hopefully we'll see Lending Cart and Sugar first. Uh, there's a company called Okter.”

Q And how did you, five of you split the rows among yourselves?

A Yeah, like I said, this is really where we were very, uh, fungible. I mean, we didn't really put some hard lines saying, this is you, this is you, this is you. So it was always a very, so, uh, the way I looked, um, Hari obviously as a CEO took on the entire overall responsibility, including people and making sure that, uh, the fundamental piece and Whipple clearly took on the role of making sure that the investor side and the finance was taken and marketing. So that was like, uh, uh, critical piece. Uh, Abhinai did a lot of things, including some of the new, uh, ventures we did in terms of B to B and all that, and Ramesh took care of the entire logistics.

AI assessment note: “Hari obviously as a CEO took on the entire overall responsibility”

Q Take for example, Traxen we talked about, right? Uh, 60, 65 crores of revenue, 800 crores they listed at, and they have oscillated between 600 to 900 crores of valuation, which is decent, right? And as the company grows, the markets will value them more.

A I, I would say using a revenue metric A loan is not very useful. At some point, the companies will be profitable. So for over 65 crores, the guy earns a profit after tax of say five or six crores. Then 800 crores is a little rich. Unless you have a way to compound that 65 crores of revenue into say 400 crores of revenue. And because of economies of scale, you're able to increase your margins net after tax to say 25%, which means you get a 125 crores in profits. I'm willing to pay, say, 30 times for that. So that's 3700 crores. So I don't mean paying 800 crore valuation today if I can get a 3700 crore valuation, say, four or five years. So if there is that as a hope, then I can do this. But if there is no way to demonstrably increase that 65 crore into 500, and that could be because Stratxon, for instance, serves the startup ecosystem, and it serves VCs, serves PEs. They, that market has an inherent limitation in size in India. Perhaps in the U.S. US also, I mean, unless they're doing worldwide these things, but there's also the fact that, um, this is an inherently cyclical business. You reach an upcycle and we see investments, you get a certain amount of business. When the down cycle starts, your customers will start telling you, I heard this recently, a company that I know was selling SaaS software to a bunch of ed tech companies. Uh, because by user acquired a bunch of web te…

AI assessment note: “using a revenue metric A loan is not very useful”

Q And how has this market been growing like for the last 10 years? Because you have been a participant in this market for 10 years.

A Yeah. So I think, uh, you know, the cash volumes are generally somewhat correlated with how the index kind of performs, you know, um, and, uh, again, retail is only a small portion of this, right? It's a, it's a sub-twenty percent. Of course that itself has grown. So when we first came to India in like 2000 eight-ish equity participation in India, which is basically the number of people in India that have DMAT accounts was like sub-two percent. Um, in 2012, when we started the retail business, uh, was again, sub two percent. In 2016, before I had a launch, it was still sub two percent. And now zero, pretty much almost like flattish growth, you know, and now we're at a, you know, six, six percentage kind of a number. So, uh, it's almost tripled right in the past a few years, which is incredible, but we still have very, very long ways to go. So in this timeframe, It's not just retail, it's also picked up. You know, institutional volumes have also gone up. Um, you know, companies like LIC have also started upping their, you know, their, their buys on the stock market. So all these, everyone's volumes kind of picked up, right? And, um, retail share itself has also grown. Um, and it's still, what I'm trying to say is it still has long ways to go.

AI assessment note: “equity participation in India... was like sub-two percent. And now we're at a six percentage”

Q Sure. And, uh, and you come from a very different background. You come from a village, right? Yeah. Your story is from, in the fourth class, you moved from village to a city. And then you struggled, right? Coping up with first language, then the class. So, so tell us about the background that you come from, right? The house, if you can remember what it looked like, the village.

A So, uh, my parents, uh, moved from Andhra to, uh, a small village, uh, in Raichu district near, uh, Thungabhadra river. And, uh, uh, just, In searching for, you know, greener pastures, right, because there was a dam built near Hampi, and a lot of families migrated downstream from the dam, so that, you know, they can cultivate, you know, better, and there will be water source will be, you know, continuous, right. So, so while I think it gave them a decent opportunity economically, Uh, it was very hard, uh, you know, because these were, like, uh, makeshift villages which got made in 19 seventies and eighties. Uh, and these are, like, not revenue villages. That means, you know, they are, like, not, uh, there is no government school or there is no, uh, facility. Uh, there are not even, like, roads, right? Uh, and, uh, but, uh, But the parents always had this, ah, thing of, ah, we need to get our kids educated, right, so we can't actually, again, put them into farming, because, ah, I come from a farming background, ah, my dad still does farming, ah, in the village, ah, even though he has reduced, ah, you know, how much he used to do, ah, versus what we are doing now, ah, and somewhere, ah, even I have that DNA, you know, every time I go back to village, you know, I, I, you know, I get so much peace, Ah, you know, just looking at the things. Ah, but, ah, you know, I think due to luck…

AI assessment note: “my parents, uh, moved from Andhra to, uh, a small village”

Q And tell me this side, you went really deep, uh, into seven cities. First, the first three Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, uh, rather than spreading wide. So which kind of brands in your opinion should go deep and which could should go wide?

A You're talking about offline kind of, I think if there is a possibility to go deep, we should only go deep. Like I was, I was studying, uh, a friend of mine, he used, He used to lead marketing for us. He's, uh, he's actually running a startup, which is in like a domestic health space. Uh, I told him if it's possible for you to just pick golf course road as your catchment, and then just make sure that every single house you are able to penetrate that you will get, you will get much better unit economics. You will get much better network effect. Uh, everything becomes better when you're, when you're going deep, right? So proving concept at a particular, Uh, at a particular space, if, if, if there is enough customer base who's relevant for you, and if it's, if it's a high enough frequency occasion, you don't have to, you don't have to go broader than that. The only place where that doesn't work is where you are talking about, you're talking about being in a space where it is, it is kind of the winner takes the market, right? So, so for example, an e-commerce cannot work like that. Now Flipkart could not have said that, look, I'm only going to deliver to Bangalore because, because that's, that's by nature. It is, it is a business which, which requires you to deliver everywhere. Right. So, so I think as far as possible, picking one small market to prove what, whether, whether it wor…

AI assessment note: “The only place where that doesn't work is where you are talking about”

Q And what do you charge in software for?

A So a lot of features, uh, there are a lot of, uh, advanced ride assist features. So for example, you want to turn auto hold on. So it's a, it's a pretty nifty feature where, uh, if you bring your scooter to a stop and you leave your brakes, Your scooter won't roll back and forth. So you could be on a little bit of a slopey surface, the scooter will just stay there. So you don't have to keep your brakes pressed. And the minute you throttle, it'll start going forward. Uh, actually very well implemented. So this algorithm is part of the software pack. Uh, there are some advanced regenerative features. There is the entire connectivity suit turns on. So, four G connectivity in the vehicle, Bluetooth connectivity in the vehicle, uh, the ability to take calls, the ability to, uh, listen to music, uh, mobile phone tracking, remote service booking, Uh, many, many, many, many. So, everything with software in it, they're kind of bundled in a single pack. In a sense, in a sense, a little similar to how Tesla does a single software pack of its autonomous features. Obviously, this has nothing to do with autonomy, but everything non-hardware-ish kind of comes in this one package.

AI assessment note: “everything with software in it, they're kind of bundled in a single pack.”

Q After you joined, what are the first few investments that you led for the family office?

A So after I joined, I actually, there was a little bit of that pent up energy of not making investments in fund two from transit. So, uh, ended up moving a little bit fast. I think front row was one of my first investments that I made. It's an ad tech company, uh, Ishaan and Mikhail, great founders again. Then we invested in Nua, we invested in Mokobar. I think I've lost count. I mean, I've lost the sequence now, but roughly I did about eight new transactions, one exit, uh, in a span of about seven to eight months. So that was like, wow, exhilarating, uh, pace. And the portfolio now is about 12 companies, uh, across consumer and consumer.

AI assessment note: “I think front row was one of my first investments that I made.”

Q This is what you thought, right? The category people were most curious to know from Deepika.

A Correct. Exactly. And she's known for her skin, right? She's known for her glowing skin. There are articles and there are a lot of press around it also, right? You will see a ton of them, right? And, and she herself had gone through that experience where she, uh, had understood what the true pain point is, right? So for example, the whole, uh, marriage of India and science is something that came out of Deepika, right? Like through her, uh, experience where, um, she would either find products which were very Ayurvedic, uh, focus on Indian ingredients, et cetera, or she would find products which are clean label science, very chemical driven kind of a thing. And when we were brainstorming at the start of, you know, at the inception and the ideation of AT-Trees, I distinctly remember we, she and I were in a conference room brainstorming, and I, my first reaction was, let's build something which is natural, organic, coming out of India. And I could see that she was getting a bit uncomfortable, and I broke further saying that, like, what's bothering you? And she was like, look, if this makes sense from a business standpoint, let's do it. But if you ask me, what we should truly do is combine India and science and go on, because that's something I have struggled with. Why can't we get the best of both worlds into one product? And really that's, uh, that's how, uh, we have built a diffe…

AI assessment note: “Correct. Exactly. And she's known for her skin, right?”

Q You got the opportunity to work with the VC firm. You were not working on investing. You were managing the community from Prime Venture Partners and you were also doing like The podcast. Your own podcast, like our podcast, and the podcast for Prime as your partner. What was happening in your mind? Like, investing, like, where did you reach? What are you doing now?

A So, before Prime, right, we were at Shiro's, both you and me. We had deployed very few checks, I think two or three checks. Like, we met Taran of Neemans. He agreed to sponsor the podcast, and that's how I offered Taran that, hey, can you take a small check from us? That's how investment in Neemans happened. Two or three checks like that happened, and I got my own taste. It was just me versus me. So there was no learning happening where I could debate ideas with other people on investing. Is this a good opportunity or not? Let me move forward, right? What happened is, after Prime, I joined Amazon Web Services, and Amazon Web Services allowed you to invest. At that point of time, we started building the fund one, which was very small, right?

AI assessment note: “after Prime, I joined Amazon Web Services... At that point of time, we started building”

Q And how much time it took you to raise the 45 mill fund?

A Those funds, I think it took, ah, I would say by the time we had, ah, commitments fully would have taken four to six months. But the thing is that the way you do funds is that you don't need to close the full fund in order to start deploying. So again, you are able to actually do a substantial close about 70, 80% of the fund within the first three, four months. Uh, and then actually have conversations with, uh, with some other folks and keep it open for a little bit longer to actually close it. Uh, so it was reasonably fast, and it is important because you don't want to be out market. I mean, you know this as a fund manager, right? Which is that if you're investing and then you suddenly stop investing, you might actually get an opportunity just at that time. So you sort of have to start the, kick off the process of fundraise a little bit before the last investment has been made from the, from the fund so that you can actually just continue from one fund to the, because entrepreneurs don't care which fund you're investing in, right? They just say that, okay.

AI assessment note: “fully would have taken four to six months.”

Q You have a own unique space, right? There are companies like Daily Hunt, ShareChat, which are also serving the same set of audience. Can you share it? How does the positioning work for Koo in the audience mind?

A So I think, you know, every platform, one has a particular use case, right? And for that use case, you will attract a certain crowd from the population. Right. So for example, let's take Facebook as an example. Facebook is a network of family and friends. So when you open Facebook, You are expecting updates from family and friends. Now Facebook isn't really updates from family and friends. It's random content. And that's why it's kind of like losing relevance. Instagram is for lifestyle. Like what you eat, where you go, who you hang out with, all of that is on Instagram. Twitter is for thoughts and opinions. Daily hunt is an aggregator of news, and you will go there to consume all your news in different languages, whichever language you like. Share chat is more entertainment. You know, it's a bunch of WhatsApp forwards relevant today that is being circulated on that network. Coup is a thoughts and opinions network, which is attracting people who want updates from people that they follow, right? So each one has a different use case, right? And we are different because we kind of like attract the top of the pyramid. So the influencers are on Coup. English folks are on Coup. And the premium language folks are on Koo, right? In a share chat kind of environment, I think the language speakers who are at the bottom of the pyramid are on share chat, right? At least our learning has bee…

AI assessment note: “Coup is a thoughts and opinions network, which is attracting people who want updates”

Q And have you seen any other industry where this approach helped, like building? Today, how many products you would have?

A Yeah, close to 14 to 15 products on the platform right now. Pretty good, I think. Today, there are four umbrellas we work with. One is the collection suit. Yeah. So wherever you have to collect revenue from, you can collect via cash-free. So we have payment gateway, payment links, we have recurring payments, like soft POS, bank transfer, right? So it, it's a full sort of product, right? I mean, the entire revenue can be collected by cash tree. Then we have a dispersal as a separate stack, right? We have escrow as a service, connected banking, payouts, right? And even something around cross borders, which they can use. Then we have things around risk and verification, which is a big area. And then we have like valued services as part of the entire offering.

AI assessment note: “close to 14 to 15 products on the platform right now.”

Q And you are expecting to continue the same growth this calendar year?

A Yeah. So, we are finally back into growth mode after, you know, the pause that we took during COVID. We have You know, as a business hit what is called as like operating leverage, operating efficiencies, which means that we are sufficiently covering all of our costs and also incremental costs that we might have for growth by a decent margin, you know, businesses upwards of 20% margins at this point in time. And we want to grow at a pace in which is fast enough for You know, decent amount of expansion because we have still a lot to penetrate in the market, but isn't too much that it ever risks the business margins and us, you know, keeping these healthy margins. So that's kind of a balance that we've now figured out. And, um, we'll be adding, you know, about 20,000 desks year over year, which for us is like between 30 to 45%, you know, growth.

AI assessment note: “we'll be adding, you know, about 20,000 desks year over year”

Q And during those two years of COVID, you saw almost like, what, 10% occupancy or five percent occupancy?

A It was like, zero. First wave was like, the worst, right, where everyone was in panic mode, and government rules and all of that also was, you know, in panic mode. We saw occupancy, like, what is sold, go from 77% at that point in time, down to 47% in, like, a span of 30 days, or, like, 45 days. And this was really because our value proposition was that, was that if your business is not doing well, or, like, you have, you know, if you need to scale back, you can, but it's generally because, like, industries have cycles, and, you know, different companies have cycles, so when you're In so many different industries as like a member base, it's okay because tomorrow, today, let's say tech is kind of scaling back, but BFSI, you know, and banking is expanding, you know, almost doubling more than what tech is kind of scaling back in, in some sense. So you always have that balance, but like COVID, it was, you know, everyone, everyone scaled back. People didn't know what to do. Do I have to pay the rent? Do I not have to pay the rent? Should I negotiate the rent? Everyone used it as an opportunity. So, so yeah, we were worried, but we took a very different approach, I think, than everyone else. We said that we are custodians to a lot of small businesses. In the sense that a lot of people are building their livelihood, their dreams in our space. So today if we take like a draconian stanc…

AI assessment note: “We saw occupancy, like, what is sold, go from 77% at that point in time, down to 47%”

Q Can you tell us, right, you shared some of the steps on your, your demand engine. You shared a community, pre-flight, you shared a podcast you had, you shared, you know, the brand investments like the rapid you did in brand building, now it events. What are the other steps that you did in your demand engine?

A We did start spending on marketing early, like on keywords, search keywords to start with. We tried some LinkedIn as well. I don't think, you know, we were experts at any of it early on. We're getting better at those things now with, you know, hiring people who can manage those things. But we started spending some money on it from early, right? We used to send 10,000 dollars a month from August, 20, 21 itself. So just like a couple of months into having the product live. Because creating multiple engines of growth is something we Feel is important in the journey. And we need to, of course, measure and see what works, what doesn't, but we felt it was very important to experiment with different channels and figure out what is going to work for us. So we started spending money on those experiments. Even if we get two customers from spending 10,000 dollars, it's going to make up for that money spent. And, uh, cost of servicing a customer in SaaS anyway is pretty low. So we did pursue different Advertising. Actually, we had customers who told us they found us through Instagram as well.

AI assessment note: “We did start spending on marketing early, like on keywords, search keywords to start with.”

Q And what was the private round valuation that you raised pre IPO?

A See the last round that we did just ahead of the IPO in early 2021, that was when one of our early investors exited completely. So Morgan Stanley invested in us in 2016. And, uh, when they decided to exit, we had, um, Sequoia, which led the round. So we sort of doubled up this investment in us. Sequoia came in 2017. They participated again in 2018. So they doubled up their investment in 2021. When sort of Morgan Stanley exited, and along with that, we also got a couple of new investors to join the table. So we had KKR, we had TVS Capital who was joining in, and we also had investors like Norwest who put in more and additional monies at that point of view. That valuation was about 10,300 crores. So, so that happened in early 2021. And, you know, then finally we did this IPO at about 13,000 crores.

AI assessment note: “That valuation was about 10,300 crores.”

Q Like few examples that the top cities can you give?

A So in Tamil Nadu, you know, we are there in very, very small locations like Edapadi, Nagarkoil, Takkalai, Tirichendur. In, um, you know, in, if you take Karnataka, we are there, uh, apart from the big cities, we are also there in many, many, uh, smaller cities. We are there in a lot of places in North Karnataka. In Maharashtra, we are there in places like Solapur, Sangli, Pandarpur. In Madhya Pradesh, we have about 40 branches today. So in Andhra Pradesh, which is often an ignored market, We have more than hundred branches only in Andhra Pradesh. So it's a large market. We believe that tier three to tier six or tier seven is a very big market because most larger financial institutions do not get there. And you know, we are displacing money lenders wherever that we go.

AI assessment note: “we are there in very, very small locations like Edapadi, Nagarkoil, Takkalai, Tirichendur.”

Q And that would be what number in crores?

A And, oh, but four and a half, five lakh crores is the base estimate on something like that. In our economy, that's a very large number. The beauty of this country, and you know, I'll give you a stat of this two, two and a half percent of GDP for the rest of the world, global average is .3. Okay. To .5. So we are five X to, you know, eight X of this number. And there's a beautiful story behind it as to why we are the way we are as well also. If you read Chanakya Neeti ever, and a friend of mine made me do that once. Chanakya said that beautifully, where he said, 25% of your wealth must be in the form of gold, because you don't know when you'd have to run. That's your bet against your own government. And see how it plays out, right? You had kingdoms back then. You don't know one kingdom gets overthrown by another kingdom, and then all those people who are from one religion or one area have to run to somewhere else. You can't run with your land. You have to run with your gold at that point. The second piece that happens is, look at Ukraine right now. What could people have left with? And I think that's created one big jump as well in gold consumption across. If you see pre-Ukraine war prices of gold as well as other commodities, and now you'd see that It's the only one that's gone up. Everything else has possibly stagnated or gone down in itself. So I think there's a lot of value …

AI assessment note: “four and a half, five lakh crores is the base estimate”

Q And how did you choose Indonesia at that point in time?

A It was not me. In fact, one of my bosses, Mr. Ashok Mach, he was working Indorama Group in Indonesia. And when I decided to move out of the country, I messaged him, I sent him a mail, and I said, look, this is my CV, and I want to somehow work outside and see if you have any chance in your organization. And he knew me exactly how I was. So he recommended to the bosses, the owners, Mr. Espiloja, and Espiloja wanted somebody at that point of time who can work in strategy and business growth, and as fate would have it, he was in India when he got that mail, and he said that I am in Bombay, and if he can meet me, and that's how we met, and that's how the whole thing started. So it's like, I had not chosen Indonesia. In fact, my fate, my energy chose that, and And it all happened. I never felt Indonesia was a great city because we were looking east to that point of time, and I thought always Singapore or Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur would be great, but when I landed in Jakarta, it was, it was different. It was very well, and it was good city, and I, I felt happy about that decision.

AI assessment note: “It was not me. In fact, one of my bosses... was working Indorama Group in Indonesia.”