The Exchanges

Q Farouk, we would love to know about your background, you know, before FINE journey started, where you grew up, right, your childhood, what your parents did, right? Sure. Sure.

A Uh, so I was, uh, born and brought up in, uh, Kuwait. Uh, Kuwait is this small Middle East, uh, country, an oil rich Middle East country. Uh, I was born and brought up over there. I did my schooling, uh, till 10th over there. Uh, my mom's a housemaker and my dad, uh, used to work in, uh, Hitachi. Uh, he was a general manager of Hitachi in that region. Uh, so as a kid, uh, we had, I mean, I used to hang, we studied in this school called the Indian School, Kuwait. It's one of the few schools that was there, uh, in Kuwait. Did my 10th over there. After that, I, uh, to pursue JE, uh, I, I moved to, uh, India, uh, Bangalore specifically. Uh, that's when, when I came to Bangalore, then I kind of realized, you know, the level of competition that really existed, uh, in India. Uh, when you, when you are in, uh, when you are in Kuwait, you know, it is a small country with, and it's relatively easy to, you know, uh, top that sort of a small area. When you come to India, you kind of realize, you know, there's so many more talented people, uh, than you, and you really need to put in the hard work, Do it. So the first few years, I first two years, uh, after I graduated from 10, uh, it's called first view, second view. I didn't even know what we used to perform before I came over here. So I, I, I was there and I did my first view, second view. And then the first attempt at J I didn't, I didn'…

AI assessment note: “I was born and brought up in Kuwait... my mom's a housemaker and my dad”

Q We would love to know in detail how this went, right? From the call till. Sure. Okay. Sure.

A So, uh, what happened? Let me recall this. So, uh, I think this is like, uh, June, July of, uh, 2018, and, uh, Reliance runs this incubator called, uh, Gen Next Ventures, and Harsh was, uh, invited over there to, to speak, uh, about how, how, how we, how, how we got growth, uh, uh, or how we got traction, uh, but then he decided to speak on, you know, how we, how we built the organization culture. Uh, instead of growth. And that was a presentation he made to, uh, some cohort of, uh, gen X ventures as part of the, the gen X ventures, uh, monthly update to, uh, uh, MBA, sir. They then, uh, sent the pitch that we had, uh, presented in that, uh, uh, in that session, which, uh, got them really interested in, Uh, us saying that, you know, this is exactly how we think and this is exactly how we want to build. So we should talk to these boys. And that's how we got, uh, then invited to, uh, uh, we got invited by the chairman's office to come and meet. Um, so one fine day. Me and Harsh, uh, then go to, uh, Reliance Corporate Park, which is on the auscourts of, of, uh, Bombay. And we are told that we are going to meet, um, uh, Manoj Modi, sir. And at that point of time, uh, we were working with Reliance Brand for almost like four or five years now, but we've never actually had, uh, interacted anyone with anyone at the Reliance leadership. So I said, fine.

AI assessment note: “I think this is like, uh, June, July of, uh, 2018”

Q And, uh, the basic, uh, problem ShopSense was solving as a digital store, uh, people could try, uh, virtually, right? Okay.

A So what problems we, we wanted to solve, uh, with ShopSense were, were, were manifold. One was, uh, discovery of products. So if you see how products are kind of stacked in a store, it's very difficult to really know. You have to go, you know, rack by rack. Aisle by aisle. So we said, you know, we're going to solve the discovery problem. We're also going to solve the, the check for availability problem, which means if you walk into a store and if a product is not available, you could see which other store the product is available. We didn't, we had not enabled transactions in the first go itself. We had just enabled kind of, uh, this, we also wanted to understand And, and this was a little far fetched, right? We wanted to kind of create that sort of, you know, uh, discovery to transaction funnel. So we thought, you know, if people came onto the device and played with the product, and if those products got sold, uh, can we kind of, you know, infer, or, you know, what products, uh, have, what sort of, you know, uh, throughput in, in terms of, you know, visitors to, to transactions. Uh, but that really, that didn't really, uh, pan out. What we found later on with the most powerful, uh, use case was when we enabled transactions was that, you know, you could buy products from, from that brand without visiting the other store, right? If you walked into a store and you need, you, you …

AI assessment note: “So what problems we, we wanted to solve, uh, with ShopSense were, were, were manifold.”

Q So I would love to know that story. Like what was that made you pivot from ShopSense to find?

A Uh, multiple things and oddly, you know, When you're building a company, not everything is, uh, really in your control, right? I mean, there are market forces, uh, they are in investor sentiment. So, uh, in 2000, uh, 1314, after we had kind of started getting good traction, uh, we started approaching VCs, you know, to raise a raise around. And, and that time, uh, the, you know, the poster child of enterprise tech was capillary. And, uh, We would get kind of, uh, we would, we would get, uh, compared to capillary, uh, right. Can you become as big as capillary? Can you become, uh, can you take this, you know, this product outside? Can you, you know, build, uh, build in India, sell it to us? Uh, but, uh, what was happening in 1415 was, uh, enterprise SAS, you know, built from India and sell to the globe. Uh, that story was really not panning out. Uh, Companies were, you know, struggling, uh, even companies who had raised a lot of capital were really struggling, uh, to, to, to that. I mean, people, investors who had invested in capillary, they were, you know, sending all sorts of signals, you know, this sort of model will not work. Uh, so we, we had those sort of headwinds, uh, for our enterprise SAS. Second, what was happening was, uh, Everyone wanted to invest in, uh, in consumer internet. Uh, this is still pre, pre, pre geo.

AI assessment note: “we had those sort of headwinds, uh, for our enterprise SAS.”

Q Got it. Got it. And how has your journey been post acquisition, right? Uh, you have been an active angel investor Correct. Right. So, so would just love to touch upon that journey. When did you make your first angel investments? And if you can share your, you know, your list of angels.

A My first angel investment actually was way back in Uh, and that time I, we invested in, in a friend, company of, friend of mine, uh, from campus. Uh, he, he used to work in this company called IdeaForge, uh, the, the drone company, and then he left IdeaForge. The first deal I did was in, in this company, I forget the name of that company also. That kind of shut down. Uh, but I've been in angel investing from, uh, and the simple idea was essentially, you know, uh, people who, who, uh, who I know are from campus, who are investing, who are starting up, I would invest, uh, in them. And our check size used to be relatively, uh, small, small then. But we would kind of pull in together and, you know, do like a 25, two 30, 50 lakh rupee round, whatever, uh, they wanted. And this is, in that time, you know, there wasn't any, like, pre-seed round, or there wasn't any, you know, these angel syndicates, right? Uh, it was, it was much tougher to raise, uh, capital, especially your first, first, uh, first round. Uh, and, uh, in 2000, uh, 17, no, I think in 2017 or 18, uh, uh, With, uh, with, uh, Gagan Goyal, we kind of institutionalized this, uh, this, uh, this fund called, uh, First Check, uh, with, uh, which was essentially, right, at any time I would invest, First Check would also kind of co-invest, uh, along, along with, uh, with me, and then it kind of became easier for me to, you know…

AI assessment note: “My first angel investment actually was way back in”

Q Uh, towards the end of, uh, and by then, you were only running on the, you were only running on the 300,000 dollars you had raised in 2013, right?

A Uh, no, we raised a million dollar in between. In 2015, we had raised a million dollar. Uh, right. So again, again over there, right. So, uh, what we did was in 2000, early 2000, uh, 16, we kind of realized we need longer runway. So we went to the team and I think we were around 50, 60 odd member team and we said, we are, we will have, uh, we are having trouble raising capital. So what I would want you to do is, uh, tell us how much salary you can, you know, not take home. So people were, we reduced salaries from 30% to 50% and for us we had made it zero and we said, uh, We will end towards the end of it. We will return once we, once we raise the capital, we'll return all of that. Plus we will, you know, put in a 20% bonus on top of that. So it's imagine if you kind of deferred your salary for one lakh rupees, we will return it, uh, one point. So that allowed us to really extend that our runway, uh, by several, several months. And that kind of allowed us to, you know, close around and, and, and continue building the company. After we got a series A, you know, we, that's when we kind of really started seriously, uh, to build a company, to build the organization. Uh, and that's where all the fun, fun really became, uh, began, uh, in, in, uh, we, we became, uh, we started aggressively going after the market. Uh, we acquired, uh, I forget, you know, we started acquiring, you know, …

AI assessment note: “no, we raised a million dollar in between. In 2015, we had raised a million dollar.”