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 Aman is hardcore. He has cried on him in his journey so less as you. He didn't cry. Or might have to, you know, kept his tears after the episode. But how was the experience? How did you get into Shark Tank?

A So there is an application process, right? So you apply in June. I think applications open in April. So you apply and then you're supposed to submit a written application where they ask for a lot of the usual business Any angel network or something you apply to is very similar process. And then they also ask for a video that you need to submit. We had a very interesting video that we had made when we had first raised our funds. So we just edited that and submitted that and I think they loved that video. So that's what pushed us into the next round. Then they have auditions. So we had our audition in Bangalore. So there is a jury who comes and, uh, you know, evaluates. It's almost like a mock pitch. So we did that and then we qualified for the main Shark Tank

AI assessment note: “So you apply and then you're supposed to submit a written application”

Q And maybe flat hats can become a category of its own. Doesn't need to be just shoes, right?

A Absolutely. So the intent was to create Flatheads as a urban lifestyle brand in the longer term. But we wanted to start with shoes. And why shoes? Because if you look at apparel, if you look at other categories, the engineering of the product, I won't trivialize a lot of those categories because everybody has their own nuances. But the engineering of the product is a little simpler. But shoes are very, very hard to engineer. The Indian foot versus the Chinese foot versus the American foot. Versus the European foot is very different. And guess what? We are the second largest consumer of footwear in the world because we are the second largest population in the world. But Indian foot has never been measured. There has been no study on what an Indian foot is. So we have to start there. There is a lot of discovery out there to be made. And once you create a shoe, if you look at apparel, there are multiple brands that have launched. If you look at food and beverages, if you look at FMCG, personal care, brands are exploding. Because there are a limited number of formulators out there, for example. But once you created a formulation, then it's about a brand play, right? And a supply chain and distribution play. Whereas in the shoe category, you haven't seen too many brands launch, right? It's a difficult category to get into. But if you do a good job of it, you can actually build a res…

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. So the intent was to create Flatheads as a urban lifestyle brand”

Q What was the thing that during the pitch, right? We were very open during the pitch. It was not that, you know, hey, I'm a serial entrepreneur with this much experience. I come from IIT Mumbai, IMB, and this is how, you know, I want to do it. So what brings that humility?

A Yeah, I wasn't that humble, to be honest, earlier. Entrepreneurship and failures teach you a lot of that humility. It's just a journey, man. If you are having the willingness to learn, you will learn a lot of things which you would have never otherwise, right? I was a part of corporate for 15 years before I started my entrepreneurial journey. There is a lot of ego out there, and I've been one of those guys. The problem with bringing your ego into the picture is that you stop learning. Suddenly there's a wall that you build in front of you, right? You're not listening anymore. You're just continuously saying in your own mind that, you know what, what the hell is he saying? I know more than him. Then the ability to learn that attitude goes away. But guess what? When you're talking first principles, and when you're in that entrepreneurial journey, Everybody that you talk to has something to offer, has something that you can learn from. That is something that I have discovered through these 10 years that I have been an entrepreneur. That openness, if you don't have, you know, you miss a lot of things that you could have done very differently, you know, going forward. So that's what I approached it with. Yes, there were a couple of places there where I said, yeah, what are they, what are they talking about? Maybe I should interject, but okay, I mean, they've been through this and th…

AI assessment note: “Entrepreneurship and failures teach you a lot of that humility.”

Q and people not coming out of their homes, nobody wears shoes anymore. People were in their shorts at home taking online Zoom meetings. So that have been, would have been a very tough time, right? Because you conceptualized the product, you took out the first product in the market. And as soon as you know, you were about to put more money into marketing, March, when you're going to hit.

A Yep. When we conceptualized Flatheads, it was about great shoes for the urban workforce, right? If you're wearing jeans to work, if you're wearing, you know, joggers to work, this is a great shoe for you to wear. Think Hush Puppies, what they did for the semi-formal and the formal era. Super comfortable and great for casual dressing. So that was the intent of building Flatheads. Our initial thought when we launched in November, was to just figure out product market fit. What is the pricing that will work? What is the product, you know, what are the colorways that sell? What are the product silhouettes that will sell? And is this communication fundamentally working, right? We believe it's an interesting communication. We've done our research, but really will it resonate with the audience was the biggest question that we had in our mind. And that's what we went out to figure out. So the first, you know, six months to a year, we had kept for product market fit testing. Four months, we said entrepreneurship is aspirational among the workforce. Everybody wants to start up one day and that aspiration is only growing in India. Given that it's a great positioning. So we literally went on LinkedIn and pinged every entrepreneur and VC out there saying, Hey, would you want to try out our shoes? And a lot of people tried it. They started talking about it. We got 25 to 30% organic traffic f…

AI assessment note: “And then March, when it happened, it was a blow and it is something”