The Exchanges

Q So can you share those years, whatever you're doing between the exit and starting rage?

A Yeah, I immediately, I, one big mistake I made was I did not take a break at all because Poster Glee was a great ride, but it got to me. I realized later on that not taking a day off for years is not, not a good thing to do. Um, and, and I wanted to take out time so that, you know, you could put your mind to work and your mind to rest so that, you know, you can build something larger, but that did not happen. So I immediately just started to build this marketplace for architects, designers, you know, builders, basically all the stakeholders of the home improvement space or home renovation space together on one platform. That was the idea there that we create something that kind of links all the key stakeholders of this market, the brands, the, the professionals and the homeowners. So that was the idea. And I immediately started building it, built a team and very quickly, I think six months into the business, I realized that PMF time because the market is, you know, we're trying to build something which is early and that clarity was very important. Obviously we also made, I think I've made a lot of mistakes. When I started, obviously one was not doing enough primary research before starting that business, not knowing enough about the customer, not knowing the, you know, our right to win basically for that product and that category. So those two years mostly was spent in making m…

AI assessment note: “I immediately just started to build this marketplace for architects, designers”

Q I've known Bharat for more than five years today. Would love to know your genesis of your entrepreneurial journey, your background, you know, your family, where do you come from and what landed you into entrepreneurship?

A Um, born, brought up in Delhi. And I think one good thing that happened to me very early on in my life was I realized that I have inclination to lead, you know, because I was the one who was maybe trying to become a school monitor and I was, you know, the captain of my school football team, um, became the head of my school. I was always, you know, interested in collecting people for a mission as a, you know, we can say that. And that was my, that was the big learning that I had in my school life. And, and I was also academically very bright, but most of my heart was in sports. So I played football. I played a lot of sports. I was into athletics. So my only whole purpose in, in my growing up years was to be able to, uh, you know, convince my mom to let me go and play. The trade-off was to study and then go and play in the evenings. And, and that was my first love. Football was my first love. So I learned a lot, you know, looking back, I learned a lot, you know, By being involved in sports discipline, you know, we had our practices starting at four, four 30 in the morning. Um, I also played for Delhi under 14. So that was a, you know, big, big experience of my life. And then overall, I think beyond, beyond leadership, it was also an understanding that I did not want to do what everybody else was doing. So engineering or medicine, there was no interest. I had very, very little inc…

AI assessment note: “born, brought up in Delhi. And I think one good thing that happened”

Q And can you share your journey of Postergalli that how you conceptualize it? How did you exited that?

A Poster Kali was a passion project. It was something that I really wanted for myself. And then because I was not able to get it, which was basically, I was a fan of a lot of these rock bands and football stars. And I always thought, why do we not have something like this? You know, in India, I could actually not buy it anywhere in the country, not just in Delhi or in, in the metros. And Just the idea that you could, the first, the first disruption was obviously the power of internet, you know, the power of being able to sell something online because, you know, the entire art business or the, um, merchandise business is very limiting. If you're just having 15 skews in a shop or, you know, a hundred skews in a shop, because the idea is to have a variety, you know, and that's how you get repeats in that business. So, and I wanted to change my wall, you know, my room wall every month as a 20 year old. So that was the idea. How do we get, get, get, you know, fan merchandise, you know, copyrighted merchandise online. And then I started working with a trader based out of Australia. So he started shipping, they started shipping me licensed merchandise. It was a passion project. First I bought for myself, then I started to sell it and After this happened, I realized, I think six or seven months into the journey that, you know, and people told me it was not striking me what I'm sitting on…

AI assessment note: “Poster Kali was a passion project. It was something that I really wanted for myself.”

Q Which year you hesitated the business and if you can share like roughly how much, uh, what was the exit size?

A Yet the exit was about three and a half times of annualized revenues, but it was a deal that we stuck the buying party. So that deal was essentially, we formed a new entity wherein some part of that money was being, you know, allocated for the growth of that business. And I was a director, you know, shareholder and obviously building that business out. So, so that the deal was structured in a way where everybody got the returns. I was logged in to kind of build something larger. And that was what I mean as a 24, 25 year old, 25 year old rather, I, I feel that those six months where the acquisition happened It, it showed me the mirror on how, how businesses really, really work, you know, and how M&A really works, you know, and, and, and that's the time I read this book, the art of war. And, and, and there's a lot of strategies that I use, started to implement in negotiation in, you know, in just getting the right output when you sit in a room. So it was a great exit, but limiting of, of sorts, because if we, if we had known all of the end, you know, point, then it would have been a different journey, but it was, it was something exciting. It was something exciting for sure.

AI assessment note: “the exit was about three and a half times of annualized revenues”