Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 3 4.45
Q And which are the businesses that are going to suffer most, right? I'm not just talking about online those things. I'm talking about yesterday, talking about the entire startup ecosystem. You have been here.
A I tell you businesses which will suffer the most right now are businesses that are not building a profitable model. People who are building on just for growth and hence the model burns a lot of money are the businesses that are struggling. Because I think that wave has turned, right? People are now Wanting, you don't have to be profitable, right? Overnight. All you're wanting to demonstrate or you're requiring to demonstrate is a profitable model. You must explain to me that the model is profitable. That's happening. And if you don't do that, then it becomes difficult. And then if you don't, after getting the money, don't demonstrate it as you keep going forward, raising money will become more and more difficult. So I think unit economics and profitability are going to be the next. And logically so, yeah, why would you build a business that doesn't make money? It doesn't make sense, no?
AI assessment note: “businesses which will suffer the most right now are businesses that are not building a profitable model”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q That way. And you exited 60% plus of your company for one billion dollars from Prata. Do you think that you could have built a ten billion dollar company given a few more years?
A Of course, no. We will still build a ten billion dollar company. So there is nothing different in BigBasket. So it's an investment. It's not an acquisition, right? Because it's, you may call it whatever, it's a majority state holding, and we are of course now part of the TADA group. You'll see all our logos saying TADA enterprise. We really like it. We really think you've done absolutely the right thing. Lot of match, matching values, cultural system. We just feel so much at home, right? Because there's so much of similarities between the group and us. We are of course much smaller, and that's the reason we did it. The other more important reason that we did it is that we have reached a stage in our company at a billion dollars of sales. You need to now get strategics or you need to get piece because you at one point go out of this whole BC world because of the quantum of money that you probably need, the amount of stake they will get. So they're, their whole model is very different, right? So they start, they're up to early stage, series A, series B, series D. At that point, you either need to get a P or you need to get a strategic, right? So we had the first strategic that came in two years before in the form of Alibaba. Unfortunately, because of the, all the issues that were there with China and stuff like that, they couldn't make further investments. Otherwise, Alibaba was …
AI assessment note: “We will still build a ten billion dollar company. So there is nothing different”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 4.15
Q Hari, can you describe what is the culture? You mentioned that people at Big Basket, they are not going for ten-eight salaries outside, right? What is the culture that keeping them here?
A We basically have Four value systems and four elements of culture. And I'm not going to go through each one of them. And we are very focused on making sure that people internalize and invite this. And we don't do this for basically putting it up in my reception saying, so we don't have mission, vision and all. We don't have all that because there are certain goals that we set ourselves every year. And so we don't make such, such, such glorious statements. There are good things to it. I'm not saying good or bad. For us, it's all about somebody imbibing my value systems and my culture that we have actually defined for this organization. For example, we have one, one of these elements, which is called integrity. Now that is, everybody has integrity. You know, which organization you tell me doesn't have integrity as part of its value system or part of its culture. Everybody has integrity. The issue is that if you were to define integrity the way you want Your people to behave. And that we defined. So what integrity for us is the power to say no. That's integrity for us. See stealing is integrity. Obviously you want to say don't steal. You don't need to tell people don't steal, but most of the organizations, the way where they say integrity means that for us integrity means the power to say no, which means that if I don't know something, if I'm able to sit in a meeting and say, sorr…
AI assessment note: “what integrity for us is the power to say no. That's integrity for us.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 3 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.30
Q And what advantages you had as second time entrepreneurs, right? Which like.
A Huge, big advantage. So we've gone through, what we've gone through in those six, seven years, I think very few entrepreneurs had the opportunity because they all shut within six months of opening, right? Because there was no funding, everything I tried out. So there are very few people who went through that whole entrepreneurial journey at that point in time. And so we were, we had the, we were lucky and we had the benefit. I'm telling you that flight, that pivot, you know, I will never, ever forget in my life because if I don't know what we'd be doing. Sitting in some IT companies somewhere, painfully, part of some 100,000 people, etc. Deepak, God, with one tag, walking in. Dog leash, I call it. Anyway, so we'd probably be doing something else, but I think the experience of one grocery itself, I think the whole benefit we got of supply chain, because we really innovated a lot in fab market. We brought in a lot of new things. We brought in technology, which no grocer was actually using at that point in time. And all that was very helpful and useful. We got up and running very fast. One. Secondly, when you are, when you go through a roller coaster, you know, that all the learnings are within you, right? So there are a few things that it told us. One, ecosystem has to be ready. That I told you, we ticked that box first because everything was ready. There are two other very impor…
AI assessment note: “Huge, big advantage. So we've gone through, what we've gone through in those six, seven years”
Redirected raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.25
Q in India for the last 20 years. Welcome Hari Menon, founder and CEO of Big Basket. Hari, your journey started in 1999 with Fab Mart, and you were the very first early entrance into the e-commerce market, I would say, right? Getting groceries, getting even the electronics on the internet. And in 2006, you exited the business profitably. What, what made you come back into the business again in 2010?
A The reason we came back is I need to go back to 99 and I'll tell you what happened there. Interesting story. We started our business in 99. Uh, we were actually at the firm, we were working in another company called PlanetAsia.com and there's a long story as to how we started. Accidentally to some extent. And maybe I should tell you that. So we used to work in an internet In India at that point in time, it's called planetasia.com. And what happened at that time was Citibank was And bid for that payment gateway. And in the course of that discussion, it also happened that if you're building a payment gateway, then you need an e-commerce site. Why are you building a payment gateway? And there's nothing available to use it. At that point in time, they were looking for people who could actually build a e-commerce site. And then we were sitting there and we looked at each other and it was a moment of truth at that point in time. And we chose to actually pick that offer and, and then move on and build that internet site or e-commerce site as they, as we used to call it at that time. So that the payment gateway could be in a sense used. And that payment gateway was the first payment gateway using a debit card. And I don't know whether you're aware that this would be the first debit card in India, which is called Subida, which Citibank had launched. So it was a payment gateway built aro…
AI assessment note: “The reason we came back is I need to go back to 99”
Not addressed raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q And what about the people that you hired? Were you able to tune out that this person is good for now, but he or she will not stay?
A Attitude is a very big criteria for us. Very big criteria. So if you have to hire somebody, I'm trying to figure whether this person has the right attitude. I keep saying, you know, skill is, he will come with some skill, right? And I don't have too much to understand depth of that skill unless it is a very specialized job, right? But otherwise to me, it's only, it's all about attitude and we are in a new business here and you can never get people to know everything about your business. Never. And so you have to take these chances and the chance I will not take if somebody I read and see or is referred to me and gets a reference that this guy has a poor attitude, I will not touch him. But First tick box for me is absolutely his attitude. If you have that, now to me, I think everything else falls in place. And very difficult to measure.
AI assessment note: “Attitude is a very big criteria for us. Very big criteria.”
