The Exchanges

Q And what happened since the episode got aired?

A It was phenomenal. The episode aired on Friday, Jan six and immediately after, actually, it was like a mini reunion we had done with all the flatheads employees sitting together and watching the episode. We did shots every time I spoke in Hindi, which was funny because I don't normally speak in Hindi and post that the phone just wouldn't stop ringing. Right. I didn't understand what was going on. Next day morning, I opened LinkedIn and I had 30,000 requests. I thought, yeah, this is interesting. Let me see what I can do. So I started hitting accept. The rate at which I was hitting accept was slower than the rate at which new invites are coming in, which is when I said, yeah, I give up, right? It was overwhelming, to be honest. I had not expected the wave of empathy and support that poured in. I actually was very embarrassed at the end of it, right? When we had shot, because yeah, I had broken down here, and breaking down on national TV is, you know, not something that you like to do. When that happened, first of all, yeah, Saturday was, I was completely numb. I didn't know what to do. Uh, Sunday is when I started looking at what's going on and what people are talking about, and that's when I realized that whether what we went through and what we've been going through largely for the last 10 years is the daily struggle of entrepreneurship, is the daily struggle of, you know, mos…

AI assessment note: “within 38 hours, all the remaining inventory that we had, we sold out.”

Q Can you describe the current scale of QMath in whatever way you can, in terms of revenue number, the terms of teachers, students?

A We have cumulatively taught About over 200,000 students over the last few years. As of today, we have about 60 to 70,000 students who are doing classes on a day to day basis with us. So that's about half a million classes per month on the platform. Quite reasonable scale, and we've been growing year on year. In terms of countries, regions, once we started going outside India, we started seeing a lot of growth from, you know, all over the place. US is our biggest market today. US is also biggest by revenue and also our fastest growing market. Price points there are obviously higher. Compared to, let's say, some of these other markets. But we are actually teaching kids in 80 plus countries across the world today. You know, and sometimes I look at the student base and I see some student from a small country, and it's quite exciting to see that. And that's the goal ultimately, to teach kids everywhere across the world. And internally, the mission, the way we articulate the mission is one billion math minds. How, how do we create an ecosystem of math learning products and services to reach, to touch every kid across the world in some way when it comes to the math learning. In terms of the revenue scale, we'll do something over the next 12 months, we'll be, we'll cross fifty million in terms of revenue, so we've been growing very nicely. And, ah, we have a network of about 8500 teach…

AI assessment note: “we'll cross fifty million in terms of revenue... network of about 8500 teachers”

Q And, uh, I remember you also mentioned that three of your portfolio have also crossed 300 crore revenue mark. So in your view, what is exactly D to see?

A Honestly, D to see as a concept has existed in India for 50 odd years. Let me give you an example. I mean, I'm sure in our childhoods, uh, you know, we would have all seen a quality walls, You know, Thela that used to come actually selling these ice creams, right? Technically that's also D to C. Okay. A company, let's say running its own exclusive brand outlet in a mall, right? Is also D to C, right? The way you also kind of define D to C anything, uh, you know, any model where a brand kind of touches the customer directly and is able to control the customer experience from start to finish. Right. In my head, that's, you know, that's the definition of D to C, right? I think what we've been seeing over the last four to five odd years is the entire advent of online or e-commerce D to C that's kind of coming to the forefront, right? On the back of, let's say Shopify becoming really popular, Amazon becoming super large, using the payment gateways, the delivery infrastructure, like delivery ship rocket, e-com express, right? I think, uh, it's the entire ecosystem That actually has, it was going through an entire, like I would say digital disruption over the last five odd years. And that's the reason why online D to C has a, it's, it's almost become like a buzzword.

AI assessment note: “any model where a brand kind of touches the customer directly”

Q So you are looking for a, for a brand that could go to 50 CR or a hundred CR idly, right? It's five to six years timeframe. It's become very difficult, right? Because for brands competing for the same eyeballs, Instagram being crowded by the thousand D to C brands. How do you pick out the winners in today's climate?

A Good question. So that one of, you know, one of the philosophies that We've always had from day one, right, is to never invest in May two stories, right? Every company, every product that you would see in our portfolio would have a certain level of differentiation, would have a certain level of first mover, or would have like a first mover in terms of innovation in that particular product category, right? So while, you know, you took examples of, uh, you know, let's say M caffeine, Et cetera, which were let's say one of our initial investments that we made in like early 2019. Right now, let me give you another example. Let's say something like Plix. Plix is a wellness, you know, sub nutrition and supplements company focused largely on millennials as a TG, right? This is an investment that we made sometime, you know, end of last year. And, you know, again, at a time when, you know, there were probably at least 10 odd investments that have already happened, uh, you know, in the nutrition and wellness space, right? And there were companies which were significantly larger than let's say something like a Plex. I think the way we kind of chose the company and just to give you like a flavor in terms of our, you know, filtering criteria, we saw that most of the wellness companies at that point of time were focusing largely on performance or either performance as a criteria. So let's sa…

AI assessment note: “never invest in May two stories, right? Every company... would have a certain level of differentiation”

Q Tiago, thanks for sharing that, and it's very powerful. Would love to dive deep into what's your why? Why did you write this book? Why did you create this system for yourself?

A Yeah, you know, for me, it goes back to, as I talk about in the book, a chronic health condition that I had starting when I was 22. I was working at the Apple Store in San Diego, going to college. And out of the blue, I just started having this terrible pain and tension in my throat, like in my neck. And that really set my life off on a very different path. You know, I had all these plans of studies I wanted to do, and work I wanted to do, and places I wanted to go, and people I wanted to meet. But for eventually, it turned into years, I just struggled with this debilitating condition. And this is when I started taking digital notes. You know, With a chronic condition, you have to manage tons of information. I had to manage just unbelievable amounts of, you know, doctor's notes and prescriptions and insurance paperwork, not to mention, you know, actually reading about, reading different papers and literature about, you know, what was happening to me, trying to understand it, trying to change things about my health, my nutrition, my exercise, all these things. And right at the moment that I had all this extra information to manage on top of my normal stuff, on top of all my studies, The side effects of the medication that I was taking actually severely hampered my short-term memory. I had trouble remembering what happened like yesterday, like even more trouble than usual, and so…

AI assessment note: “I had no choice but to depend on some external system”

Q And can you share more about what was your initial system of this note taking it? How did you want the tool set that you used earlier? And how this toolset has also evolved over the course of years.

A It's changed so much. You know, I started on paper. I would just take the paper that the doctor's office gave me and annotate it and try to make sense of it. Then it became digital and I would just use like Microsoft Word. That was the only software for manipulating information that I knew about. So I would just have a series of Word documents stored on my computer. But then I thought, okay, this isn't ideal. I moved to Google Docs. For a long time I had just different Google Docs and different folders, and then from Google Docs I moved to Evernote, and Evernote added more capabilities, was even easier to use, and eventually I think I'll, I'll move on from Evernote. There's a huge explosion, a new generation of knowledge management software that is on the scene now that is being developed. It's very, a very exciting time, but I think what I take away from all that is your second brain is not dependent on any one piece of software. It is a collection of different tools that you use, different pieces of software. Any individual app can be swapped out. Any single one can be changed, but the overarching system that is your second brain transcends any one particular tool, and that's what gives you the confidence to invest in it for the long term. Honestly, if I thought it all depended on one piece of software that could go away tomorrow, forget it. I'm not going to spend my time You…

AI assessment note: “I started on paper... use like Microsoft Word... moved to Google Docs... moved to Evernote”

Q And what common pattern has seen is, right? People try to build their notes. But there is no system for revision, right? At what point of time do I revisit a particular note? Let's say I have today read hundreds of books and for each book I created a note, but that is forgotten. And when I look at the pile of hundred, where do I begin to revise?

A Yeah. So this is where I sort of differ from other, a lot of other, you know, thought leaders, many thought leaders will tell you, okay, you know, put it on a schedule. Like, once a week, go in and read three notes. Once every, you know, once a month, go in and, ah, review, you know, remember, reflect on this many notes. I really don't see it that way. To me, you know, if you take notes on a book, let's say, and you save those in your second brain, unless there is a specific use case for those notes, you should probably never look at them again. Like, why? Why spend your precious time to go back and just Re-remember, re-memorize a bunch of notes that have no practical use case. You know, on the other hand, if you do have a use case, let's say you read a book on marketing a year or two later, you're launching a big campaign for your product. Absolutely. Go back, do a search for marketing or product or launch. At that moment, when you are starting a specific project, which is to launch the new marketing campaign, that is, and only that is the correct time to review those notes. So this is the cool thing with modern software and having everything stored in one place is you can retrieve things on demand. You can do a search and instantaneously search the entire history, everything you've ever read or thought about the subject, like in seconds. So since you have that capability, I d…

AI assessment note: “unless there is a specific use case for those notes, you should probably never look”

Q You know, coming on to the next step here, how do we make it more frictionless? So it just becomes like, Flipping a page of About Delhi, or just marking a tick mark.

A Yeah, I think this is so important. It has to be become easy. It has to become frictionless. That's the only way it's going to be sustainable. There's nothing in life that is really complex and challenging that stands the test of time. I think it comes down to all these little habit formation techniques that James Clear writes about that, you know, other people have written about make it present. So one thing with these note taking apps, That I would recommend is install them everywhere, right? Install the mobile app on your phone, put it right on the dock on the front homepage, install it on your tablet, install it on your computer, on your Apple Watch, put it in the little menu bar up at the top of your computer, install the, or activate the keyboard shortcut, so you can just do a quick keyboard shortcut. You don't even have to switch over to the app. Find what I call capture tools. There's all these little ways of capturing content. There might be dozens of them that you can find. I probably have a dozen of them that I use. So one thing is just put your note-taking tools everywhere. Like, make it so you're never more than two seconds away from a digital capture tool. Another way you can do this is automate it. So I gave the example of highlights in Kindle. You know, you're reading an e-book and you make the highlights, and it just takes a few steps to hit export and to share…

AI assessment note: “make it so you're never more than two seconds away from a digital capture tool”

Q And take us through the journey of how you prepared, like, first of all, internally yourself. What are the discussions between the founders? And then how you talk to the team and investors that, you know, taking public is the right path to go. And then what are the preparations needed to do it?

A Funnily, you know, we had actually thought about that listing is a good option when we were starting the company. And that is one of the reasons why we also had the HQ of the company in India, though we are a global platform. So, 70% of our revenue is still international. But we did realize that, you know, our base will always be India. Like our team currently is entirely based out of India. And then we will probably hit the listed market Some point in time in the journey of the company. Probably when we started, we actually took that decision of having the HQ in India and building the whole team and, you know, everything from here, like make in India, though it's a global customer base. And end of 20 20 is when we actually started to work on the listing process seriously, because, uh, you know, the markets looked sort of very conducive. So December, 20 20 is when we actually thought about internally, we decided, you know, let's Start the process. And by the time you finalize, you start working, you know, like in listing process, you have to work with some set of intermediaries, especially a banker, then the legal counsels, et cetera. So that we finalized by March of 2021. And then it took us about three to four months to do the DRHP filing. You have to do the DRHP filing. You have to move to, you know, NDS accounting format, et cetera. So there are some of the things which are…

AI assessment note: “end of 20 20 is when we actually started to work on the listing process”

Q So, uh, can, can you share your fundraising journey from the beginning to now?

A Uh, you know, I think, uh, I think our fundraising journey has been off. I would say there are two characteristics that define it. Uh, the first one is, uh, you know, build relationships with people when you don't need them, you know, and so, Um, I think my first set of capital came from people who I had worked with, um, and when I was deciding to start on my own, uh, you know, these people chipped in with their own personal money. Um, uh, Bloom came in in 2013, and I had known Bloom, um, When Bloom was raising its first round, when I used to work at Fidelity, they had pitched to us as to be their LPs. Uh, and so I knew Sanjay and Karthik from those days. Um, you know, Mumbai Angels, Chennai Angels, they chipped in with some money in 20, uh, 2013. Uh, then we raised our first Series A institutional round, uh, uh, in 2015 from Ivy Cap Ventures. Uh, Uh, luckily IVCAP also exited that round in 2021, um, for about 330 crores. So they made about 22 X of their investment. Um, IVCAP fund one was about 240 odd crores. So we returned much more than the fund size itself. Uh, although we got only 15 crores from that fund. Um, Then in 2016, uh, we raised, uh, a million dollars from JSW Ventures. Uh, you know, it's kind of different because these were not large rounds. I think they kept the company going. Um, but this was not enough capital to deploy a lot of money into long-term projects. …

AI assessment note: “then we raised our first Series A institutional round, uh, uh, in 2015”

Q So, uh, Devanshu, uh, first I would like to start with your background before SourceViz. What were you doing?

A Got it. I started a little bit from the childhood. So born and brought up in Delhi and, uh, uh, you know, I lost my dad very young, so brought up by a single mother and, uh, and the goal was very simple for me, like through college. I went to IIT Delhi goal was very simple. I wanted to solve monetary issues. So I wanted to take the highest paying job and get out of college. Uh, so for me, that happened to be consulting. So I joined Pathanon Group, which is a management consulting firm. Uh, right after college, it was based in Mumbai. And, uh, that's where I started my career. Very interesting couple of years there. Uh, it was a global consulting firm. I traveled to maybe 15 odd countries, spent a lot of time in Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia. Uh, and you know, typical work, uh, strategy consulting, private equity due diligence, uh, but sort of gave me the exposure that I really needed there, um, and was able to sort of save enough money to then be able to take a risk, uh, and start my first company, which was Connect to Teach. Uh, ran Connect to Teach for about two years. Uh, uh, it was, uh, we were solving, uh, uh, we, Building software solutions for higher education, you know, like, you know, universities or, uh, a lot of the new age, higher education companies that were coming up, uh, more in the recruitment space. So almost like an up work for higher education, most fo…

AI assessment note: “I joined Pathanon Group... start my first company, which was Connect to Teach”

Q So how many customers you met before you finalize sources?

A Um, so I had a notion document and we were very, very methodical. And this is one of the reasons why I think, uh, one of the earlier investors invested because we literally opened our notion. There were like hundreds of notes. So we probably met. 90 to hundred like ballpark hundred factories before we started. And, uh, in some of these factories, we spent two weeks, three weeks shadowing, like the owners just seeing how they work. Uh, so a lot of, a lot of time, like spent in factories, and we also went to different geographies. So we spent time in Panipat, which is a city close to Delhi, like small exporters, and then we went to Muradabad, which is a metal handicraft hub. Then we went to Ujaipur, which is handicraft, plus a little bit of apparel. We tried to also cover, uh, you know, different, uh, micro segments, uh, in terms of categories so that we know that, you know, the problems or at least high level are these industries, people, the processes, their workflows, or are they similar? So yeah, I think we met a lot of, so four or five months, I think we just spent time meeting parties. We did nothing else in that time.

AI assessment note: “we probably met. 90 to hundred like ballpark hundred factories before we started”

Q And in which month, uh, you had your first paying customer?

A So we started, ah, our fundraise happened, like, you know, by the, we started, like, I think the first team member joined us in August. So August, September, we were building the product testing with some early customers. November is when the first customer paid us. So, yeah, so two to three months into building the product. And that was by chance, like, we Like, went to a customer, we raised a pro forma invoice, and they just transferred money. So we said, then we realized that, okay, maybe the product is at the level that people will be ready to pay for it now. Before that, we were just building and, you know, taking it to a place where people, so that first customer paid, and then we said that, okay, now we can maybe charge people money. So then we started charging customers, and then try, trying different pricing models, et cetera, for the next few months.

AI assessment note: “November is when the first customer paid us.”

Q And which are the geographies the SAS is present in right now?

A In some, uh, I think we're in 14 cities. So, Delhi NCR, uh, Great Anoida, Panipat, uh, then we have, like the whole UP belt. So, Muradabad, uh, we have, uh, Muradabad, uh, Mirzapur, Badohi, Vara Naseer. That's the carpet. Then, Radabad is more metal handicrafts, and some metal furniture, wooden furniture. Then we have the whole Rajasthan, so Jaipur, Jodhpur is a big geography for us. In South, we have Karoor, we have Tirupur, uh, and then we are expanding to Ludhiana right now, uh, and expanding to some other geographies as well. Uh, so we are currently in the space, like, we're trying to get to all Indian cities as soon as we can, so deploying teams there. And, uh, trying to build scalable systems like operational systems within the company to manage such a large feet on street team. Uh, and the one thing is that in tier two, the sales people are your brand, right? Eventually that those are the people that the customers will interact with for the first time. So building strong training mechanisms to refine them, to be able to present the brand well to those customers. So those are some of the things that we're doing internally to scale the sales team.

AI assessment note: “I think we're in 14 cities. So, Delhi NCR, uh, Great Anoida, Panipat”

Q And, and what insight led you to build MyGate and how, you know, can you share how you transitioned from the, the logistics company to MyGate?

A Yeah. So one of the key, like, you know, uh, thing that we observed is in, in, in India generally, right? In gated communities, right? What you see in gated communities is they're designed to keep people out, right? There is a lot of security guards making sure that anybody who had to go inside had to be validated and had the right reason to go inside, right? Otherwise they were not letting, right? And With this booming e-commerce and more and more these e-commerce delivery executives or, you know, the service executives used to are coming to the doorsteps, right? And what we say is, in 2015, 16, we started seeing this phenomenon of commerce coming to the doorsteps, right? So when our vehicles used to go with this big basket and Amazon consignments to these gated communities, The vehicle was asked to park somewhere. The driver used to go, write his name, number in the register, figure out which flat he's supposed to deliver, write all those things in the register. The security guard will pick up the intercom and call one by one flat. And he will say, you know, right. And one by one, he'll call all the flats and he will do the validation and then send this You know, delivery boy inside, right? This process used to take 10 to 15 minutes per delivery boy at gates of these communities, right? And just imagine, right, when we used to get these, you know, vehicles, these trucks for e…

AI assessment note: “when our vehicles used to go with this big basket and Amazon consignments”

Q Well, would love to know your journey before entrepreneurship. Where did you grow up? Your parents, their background, uh, and your education. Yeah.

A So, um, I grew up in Bangalore, like I've been a Bangalore boy all my life. The only time I ever left Bangalore was, uh, to study. I went to Manipal, uh, the Mangalore one. And my mom's a CA. My dad's a doctor. So they both come from like, so my mom comes from Udupi. My dad comes from this place called Bantwal. It's a village, right? So they did okay for themselves because they kind of Sort of accelerated from, you know, a tier two, tier three sort of ecosystem, and then finally made it to Bangalore, right? Which is a big thing in those days. Uh, gave me the kind of platform to be able to at least, you know, finish my college and, and, uh, you know, they, they get, I think the best thing my parents ever did for me was they gave me a computer very young. So age of seven, I was gifted a computer. Uh, by the age of 1011, I had already started like playing games. Uh, in fact, one of the first games I played, most people don't know about this game, but it was a game called Mugen. Right? Where you could create your own character. So you could have Superman play against Pikachu and Flash play against, I don't know, uh, Iron Man, right? So it was like crazy. And the game allowed you to also, uh, write in your own character. So you could code the characters in and you can also sort of change the sprites, right? So I had to do a little bit of design on changing the sprites and I had to d…

AI assessment note: “I grew up in Bangalore... My mom's a CA. My dad's a doctor.”

Q And when did you form the market upgrade? When did you start monetizing besides your YouTube? What were the other sources?

A So, uh, the funny story about that is I used to get a lot of messages from companies by the end of 2020 saying that, hey, you seem to have grown your channel a lot and we want you to create similar content on our YouTube channel. So here's our offer. You become a content strategist on our YouTube channel. You show your face and you make videos for our channel. And I was, and I got this offer from like three or four coding at tech companies. So I thought, why not Work with all of them and launch my own agency, right? And, uh, prior to that, I was working as a freelancer, so I knew a little bit about how all of this works, but again, launching your own business, doing all of that, sales, I had, I didn't have much experience of that, because till then, all the reach and the clients I was getting was inbound, right? I haven't been on, like, a sales call with, with a client or something. So that was, uh, my experience. I just called up my roommate. I was like, bro, what are you doing these days? So he's like, let's just try to build something interesting. So he's into Instagram. He helps a lot of companies with their Instagram. So I thought, you handle Instagram, I handle YouTube, and we'll try to build this from scratch. So the initial clients, we got Coding Ninjas as one of our clients. We got Rajshaman is also one of our clients. We got a lot of clients. So my learning from all o…

AI assessment note: “by the end of 2020... why not Work with all of them and launch my own agency”

Q Now moving a little forward, right. Can you describe the open banks offering today? What are the various offerings?

A So we have three different business lines today at open. The first is an SMA business banking platform, which we offer to small businesses. Second is like an enterprise business where we help banks to launch their own near banks. So we have like the 15 out of the top 17 banks in India currently deploying our solution. And then we have a third division called switch where we offer our infrastructure to other fintechs or non fintechs to build fintech services. Um, now if you could allow me, I'll just come to the first part of this, where we actually started, which is open money. Primarily when we, you know, in 2017, I was working in pay you and before that in citrus, when we interact with a lot of these entrepreneurs, one thing which you realize that everybody's talking about that business banking is broken for them. And I always used to wonder why is business banking broken? Because I thought like, whatever, whatever complains or whatever we crib about the Indian banking system, I know that the Indian banking system is much better than what we have from the outside world. But then I realized that the problem is not just about banking. It does that. Today, as an entrepreneur, I have to use multiple tools. I'm using a Zoho. I will be using a tally. I'll be using an expense management systems and all of this, and I'll be using a payment gateway. All of the systems isn't talked to e…

AI assessment note: “we have three different business lines today at open. The first is an SMA”

Q And what was the persona of the first hundred users and then the first thousand, the next, let's say, 900 users?

A I think the first hundred users, we had a, I would not say wrong persona, but we were, we were thinking that the traditional SMEs and the, will not use your platform because they may have hesitation towards using something which is a non-bank thing. So we started focusing on the mostly the online savvy millennial users. For example, we started focusing on people who are, Homepreneurs who are very active on selling on Instagram and Facebook, who have a established set of followers, then the freelancers basically. So this was the initial set of customers we had on the hundred. But the moment when the distribution changed from hundred to thousand, when the bank brand just started selling it, then we got like a rice trader in Ahmedabad who's actually doing it for payouts. Then we started getting like people like, you know, manufacturing units, the small time B to B traders. And that's when we also got the feedback that, okay, Hey, uh, can, okay, your invoicing is good, but I'm using a tally or I'm using my own software, uh, accounting software. If I can connect that with the banking, this can add value. Then we start to build the tally plugin basically. And then it exponentially took it from thousand to 20,000 in no time, basically just because of this, a small feature, which we've got.

AI assessment note: “first hundred users... Homepreneurs... distribution changed from hundred to thousand... rice trader in Ahmedabad”

Q It's a pleasure knowing and seeing your journey very closely for the last two years, right? It makes me so proud to see you evolve into such a great founder. And we'd love to discuss, you know, to the roots of how you started. So if you could share your growing up, your family, how you got into engineering, and then, you know, what made you start Pepper?

A So Siddharth, I come from a Banya family. My dad's been into business. He's into the steel import, export, tin plate space. And he's a, you know, he's an entrepreneur who built a hundred million dollar business from scratch. So I've seen him see that kind of scale and gone through, you know, ups and downs. And so very entrepreneurial in nature from the very start, very enterprising. I always wanted to do something of my own. Worked hard to get into Bitspilani. Now when you go into colleges like these, you realize there's 900 people who are equally smart or smarter. And you're trying to figure out this one good thing you're at that others, other 900 people aren't. And the only good thing I could come up with was I could write really well. And that translated for my love for, uh, and, uh, from reading. And, um, interesting time after my grades tanked after my first semester of college, I realized I couldn't be a McKinsey consultant anymore. And that's where I started, you know, finding out media houses to intern. A lot of times a first year student wants to intern at a very good place. At that time reached out to TOI, Hindustan Times, and all the top publications at that space. None of them took me in, um, like engineering undergrad, why would they? And then your story was an up and coming media startup, which is scaling fast and really wanted to get in. So I ended up cold millin…

AI assessment note: “I come from a Banya family. My dad's been into business.”

Q And when you decided to build a marketplace, right, what are the first few steps that you took? What was the founding team like along with you? If you could describe the zero to one journey.

A So, you know, there are four of us who started Pepper and I think for me, it was, you know, finding the smartest friends I have and bringing them together. I think one good thing, I think I can pull off is being able to bring great, good quality people together for something. Interestingly, none of us were from tech. So while we were engineers, we didn't know how to code. So for the first two years of building the business out of college from our second year to fourth year, we build the business on Google sheets. Now Google sheets has a two to three MB, uh, memory. And the reason I know that is we almost reached that. And we had automated 100,000 line items on the Google sheet. Making it literally rendering it so complex to use that that's when we realized that, you know, this is a business which will take it to a million content pieces, like a million play, which means we need to build out a product to drive scale, uh, in a space like that. So I think the most interesting challenge was how do you build this out frugally? And, uh, interestingly, we bootstrapped the business till we raised our first round of funding in November, By the time we had completed our third year of college, which was, uh, May, 2019, we had done 1.75 crores of revenue till date, uh, all bootstrapped. Didn't take money from anyone else. Everything was profitable and revenue driven. So we understood funda…

AI assessment note: “there are four of us who started Pepper and I think for me”

Q Awesome. So what gives you, uh, you know, that kind of an entrepreneurial energy and drive to make things happen at this space? Are you still working like 18 hours a day and is it still sustainable?

A No, I think don't work 18 hours a day. I sleep for seven hours a day, which is good enough. Uh, and, uh, see, I think obviously, right, what got you here won't get you there. Hustle doesn't scale by the same time. Uh, what skills is that mindset of thinking big enough? And I think that's where building a great quality team makes a lot of sense. I think that's what's something a lot of entrepreneurs don't invest early on. Right. You need to truly be able to build a great transformational team that attracts likeable talent on its own and help shape what a company is. A company is not one person. A company is, is the team. And, uh, that's where that pepper we've invested in building a phenomenal team. Rohit who heads our product, built Freshdesk, Freshworks largest product. Alok who heads our translations business, was, uh, heading customer experience at OYO. Uh, Akash who looks at our text category was, uh, key unacademy leaders. The quality of team that we've invested in, right, reflects everything about the business. And that becomes a multiplier effect in my scale. So for me, the goal is not to, uh, you know, Work 18 hours a day and drive that. The key for me is can I build 10 more founder level, founder DNA people into the company who think like founders, right? And I think that's what makes all the difference. And I think that's the maturity every founder also needs to build…

AI assessment note: “No, I think don't work 18 hours a day. I sleep for seven hours”

Q worked, then perfecting, you know, the marketplace. Because now in the first four years, you would have an idea, right? If you invest X in a marketplace, you could get Y. How do you scale revenues on marketplace? Uh, the most interesting part is how did you figure out that, uh, these are the two categories that you want to stick to or launch, which is smartwatch and wireless earbuds.

A So Siddharth, you know, uh, okay, let's call it, let's go back to the drawing board, you know, uh, uh, we, we were bootstrapped, so we had no external funding, which means we had to do something differently. I mean, there, so at that time, the wired earphones was a very big market, but if we had to go for a wired earphone market, then we had to fight with big giants like JBL, Sony, Philips, and we realized that Amit, it is not, me and Gaurav realized that it's not easy for us to do, and if we go at, It's, what do you call it? It's a red ocean. You will get volumes, but they're gonna be no profits there. So from there on, you know, the hunger was there to get a differentiated offering. And fortunately we were a little bit into fitness. So we wanted a smartwatch for ourself. And we realized that there's only a Fitbit in India and there's no other option. And I said, by the way, I got my first Fitbit, a Reefer Fitbit from a US market. I was like, if this is a problem, let's solve for people around. And that's all. We started with the smartwatches in here as a space.

AI assessment note: “we realized that there's only a Fitbit in India and there's no other option.”

Q Uh, Bipin would like to start with your journey before founding MobiQuick, right, right after your graduation. So, so what are the things and events that led you to founding of MobiQuick?

A Look, I mean, I think, you know, uh, when you pass out of IIT, uh, there are only a few parts, uh, that are available. And I think those are pretty well researched and, uh, written, uh, on, uh, on media. Uh, so, uh, You know, I took the path of taking up a job, which is actually not one of the most popular jobs, but I come from a family, you know, where I was the eldest son, and two more siblings younger than me, and we come from fairly sort of, you know, modest background, and we, before I started working, so the first thing that I had to do was to actually find a job, and I took up working at Intel, and actually, you know, I started working when the world was going through a crisis. It just happened, you know, September 11 attacks had happened. The economy at that time, the world economy, the US economy had gone through a fair bit of a recession. So I started at Intel. I love chip design. I loved hardware engineering, being an electrical engineer, and started working in Bangalore. That was my first job, basically a design engineer. So, you know, when you design chips, you write code, which represent transistors, gates, electronics, et cetera. So that was the specialization with which I started my first job. Uh, I had a great time, uh, at Intel. Uh, it's a great company to, uh, you know, start your career with. It's, it's one of the biggest companies in the world today. And so…

AI assessment note: “first thing that I had to do was to actually find a job, and I took up working at Intel”

Q Uh, Bipin, could you please share the revenue numbers of MobiQuick? How has the journey been on revenue, on profit, on growth?

A Sure. So as a company, you know, MobiQuick has always been focused on, uh, growth. Uh, but we knew that at some point we also have to, uh, start, uh, generating profitability. And the first step towards that is, uh, before you become profitable at a beta level or a path level, you have to become profitable at a unit economics level, which is, And the common parlance known as contribution margin, which means that the revenue that you make versus all the variable costs, uh, you know, do you start making money on every transaction, on every business that you do every day? So, um, we achieved that milestone sometime back in, in, in, in September month, we first time hit contribution margin profitability. Uh, and since then, you know, we've maintained, uh, a significant growth, uh, while sort of hitting, uh, and maintaining contribution level profitability. In fact, in FYI, our revenue was 300 crores, uh, which grew to, in FYI, grew to 540 crores. So almost like a 86% kind of a growth. And within that, our flagship consumer payments business, uh, grew 144%. Uh, which is all, which is already, you know, at a very big scale. Uh, and the new business that we are building, which is buy now, pay later, uh, grew 840%, uh, in, um, the space of one year, uh, showing that, you know, that we are continuing to focus, uh, on growth. Um, but while doing this growth, we also became profitable. In…

AI assessment note: “our revenue was 300 crores, uh, which grew to, in FYI, grew to 540 crores.”

Q And, and how did you realize your strength, right? Uh, that you are suited for marketing and not other, uh, set of, uh, skill set.

A I think this in MBA, both signals were very strong until life was proceeding through elimination. But in MBA, it was very clear that, uh, by the way, I'm like, I'm not going to be humble when I say this, but I'm very, very good at math. Uh, my mom's a math teacher, so I was also a math teacher. So, but I realized that finance is not math. And more importantly, I got, I realized that I love marketing because I love studying human behavior and I love storytelling. And I realized very early on that marketing is nothing but these two things combined, understanding how human beings think and having the ability to communicate effectively with them through storytelling. Both of which I felt that were my strengths. So if you pick up my I am Lucknow scorecard, my average was seven. But if you cut it up, my marketing average was nine, and my finance average and economics average was five. So, so it was very, very clear. The two signals were very clear that we have to do this and it has strength. So it became quite obvious.

AI assessment note: “in MBA, it was very clear... I realized that I love marketing”

Q And how did you choose, uh, these two roles, right? Because you had more self-awareness working in HUL, now a startup, what you wanted to experiment with?

A The first role, uh, beggars can't be choosers. Uh, I wanted to come back, and I couldn't, like, I had preferences, but I was very clear that you will be right. Whatever you think is the right role, I will do. And they were kind enough to take me. The next one, I was very clear that I have to brand. Again, I was doing very, very well, and Unilever, the rule of thumb is, put a good person on a big brand. So, put a best performer on Lifeboy, Fair and Lovely, Surf, because these are thousand crore brands, right? And I told them, don't do this with me. I will hate it if you give me a thousand crore brand and tell me to take it to a 1050 crores. Give me something absolutely small. And by chance at that time, because Patanjali was doing so well, we had a lot of pressure to create a Ayurveda brand of our own. And this team was just being set up. So I raised my hand for it. And I was, it was amazing for me. Like I got to do build a brand from scratch in the comfort and with the money of Unilever.

AI assessment note: “The first role, uh, beggars can't be choosers... The next one, I was very clear”

Q And who was your right TG? You would have categorized in terms of city, age, Uh, sex.

A So, three things that we look at. Age, which is 25 to 40 years are core TG. Not as a 40, say plus. A lot of our consumers are 50, 60 year olds, etc. also. A lot of people who love the brand are 15 year olds also. But the core TG was 25 to 40, male and female, uh, metro dwellings who live in the top 10, 12 cities of the country. And the biggest check mark which makes someone a consumer of old truth is, has traveled outside the country at least once. If international exposure is one of the things that you've seen in the foreign country and you've seen the supermarket in the foreign country, the Indian shelf is stuck in the eighties. The life of an Indian in Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore is exactly like the life of a San Francisco or a London guy. But the options we get on our supermarket shelf are stuck in the eighties.

AI assessment note: “core TG was 25 to 40, male and female, uh, metro dwellings”

Q So, so Arati, before we dive deep into, uh, the journey of yours and Oziva, Could you share some high level numbers with our audience on, on what's the revenue like? How many consumers have used Ozima till now? And how has the journey like year on year growth rate been?

A So Siddharth, today, you know, we are predominantly sitting at between 150 to 180 CR, right? Uh, uh, our, uh, growth for the last three years, we've grown at a one 40% CAGR and, uh, I think over the last three, four years, 2.5 million people or 25 black people have used our products, which in itself is, you know, I think health is much difficult kind of for a new space to, you know, to be operating in India, right? And for me, I think one thing that has led to this growth also is because, you know, one of the core pillars that we say in the company is the product, right? Because if the product is great, right, I think all other Things can be built around it, right? So that's been the journey so far.

AI assessment note: “we are predominantly sitting at between 150 to 180 CR, right? Uh, uh, our, uh, growth”

Q And, uh, can, can you share, right, uh, how has the industry bonded to these products, right, when you first launched, and how has these products grown over the years?

A Yeah, so XVigil was a very, Like I said, right, it was a word of mouth sort of thing, right? We got the first customer, the customer told this to 10 of their vendors, uh, from there, you know, it, it was, it was like growing in a gradual pace. But with Bivigil, the growth was, it's kind of like crazy, by the way, right? I mean, when we launched, we had almost, um, 5000 apps, data sets, and almost, uh, hundred plus users, right? Uh, every month, that user base and the number of apps which are getting scanned is at a, at a two X rate, right? So today, we have half a million apps scanned, and we have almost, uh, 5000 plus corporate users on, on the platform. Right. And, uh, and we are expecting this to touch, uh, um, a lack users, a hundred K users in total. And we would expect that to have almost 10,000 plus, uh, corporate users signed up to the platform.

AI assessment note: “today, we have half a million apps scanned, and we have almost, uh, 5000 plus corporate users”