The Exchanges

Q So what do you do in those times which are to yourself? Do you meditate, read?

A I have never meditated at all. Uh, though I do read, I do read, I do ponder, and, uh, I talk to, uh, interesting people. So I would say the last four years of my life have been the most fulfilling years of my life because I, I've gotten to meet very interesting people. I have gotten to meet a variety of people, people who are in the NGO space, people who are working to create, uh, employment for youth in India, youth empowerment, um, you know, skill development, people who are in the social enterprises, water problem of Bangalore, people who are trying to solve. I'm actively involved in advising them. So meeting very interesting people. I would say the last four years of my journey has been the most exciting. I've gone out of my comfort zone, met interesting people, and loved it. And the reason why I have been able to do this is because at Big Basket, I have an amazing team. Two team members, I think I should really call them out. One was Tanuja Tiwari, who heads HRC, the VP HR, and VP Learning and Development is Neelam. Earlier, I had about 25 people reporting to me, but now all the 25, I've got to report to these two people, and only two of them work for me. I trust them hundred percent. I've learned from them that there's a big difference between trusting someone 95% and trusting someone hundred percent. So I trusted them blindly. They made some mistakes. People expected me …

AI assessment note: “I have never meditated at all. Uh, though I do read, I do read”

Q What would you advise at that stage is how to keep a check on on the processes, especially hiring?

A I think you need to always hire the right person. So because what happens is that investors will push you, they will push you to hire very quickly. But the point is, if you hire a wrong person, then you're setting your journey back by almost six months. And at that level, you can't afford to set the journey back by six months. So you better take two months extra and get the right individual. So for example, a taxi for sure, we were hiring a COO. I personally met about 25 candidates. I didn't like any of them. In fact, one candidate, we almost made an offer. Raghu and I both met this candidate, was very smart, said all the right things, but suddenly at night, we also made an offer, but at night it struck me that this guy is not the right Because I thought about it, all the questions that he had asked, you know, can I work from home? Can I do this? How far is the workplace? All that suddenly reminded me, this guy's not a startup guy at all, because I'd made a similar mistake in the past and realized I'm making the same mistake again. So next day morning, I spoke to Rogman and said, we should withdraw the offer. We withdrew the offer. He was really surprised, but we withdrew the offer. And ultimately we found the right COO, Arvind Singhal, we found from McDonald's who ran McDonald's for South and West. And we found him and he was a great CEO. So I think it's important to get the r…

AI assessment note: “you better take two months extra and get the right individual.”

Q So you having, uh, a glorious stint previously, both at Tata, at Daksh. What motivated you?

A So I actually, prior to, um, Taxi for Sure, I had worked for a startup called Ambar Research. Prior to that Virtu was also a startup. So Daksh also was a startup. So this was my fourth startup. So working for a startup was nothing of, of a surprise. The size of the startup though was, it was a very small startup at that point of time. And, uh, my mentor has been Sanjeev Agarwal. Sanjeev is the founder of Daksh and he has been my mentor. In many ways he continues to be my mentor. And, uh, when I was speaking with him, what I should do after I quit AMBA research. He said, why don't you talk to Taxi for Show? Why don't you talk to Raghu? So when I met Raghu, I really liked him, and I told you right at the beginning that, ah, the only thing I look for when I join a company is would I like to work with these people? Do these people interest me? These people excite me? Will these people motivate me? Every day will be fun to work with them. So that's the only question, and Raghu I found to be a very, very interesting person, and he's, the way he interviewed me was just amazing. He showed me the app. He talked about Taxi For Sure, the business, the fact that, you know, there's an aggregation platform for taxis, the kind of problem it is solving. He explained everything about the business, and finally he tells me, I don't think I'm competent to interview you. I've heard a lot of good th…

AI assessment note: “the only thing I look for when I join a company is would I”

Q What were your key learnings? And still, what are the key challenges which you face while building Big Basket?

A So I think the biggest lesson I learned from big basket was from the founders particularly was that times will keep changing. There will be oscillations at some point of time. There will be a lot of focus on growth. Investors will push you to burn a lot of money and grow. The tide would turn very quickly and investors would ask you to make profits and ask you, where is the money? The founders were clearly aware of this because they were old enough to have gone through these cycles in the past. So they built a very frugal business. They did not waste money. They did not burn money. They ran the business very optimally. So that was my biggest learning. I think when you're building a business, run the business optimally. Don't get carried away by the latest fad or fashion or trend. Do whatever is the sound thing to do. Do whatever, however a business is to be run. So I think that was very critical as a result of which we are likely to break even also very soon. So we might possibly be the first e-commerce company that would break even as a result of this approach. In terms of, uh, challenges, I think, uh, we work with a large category of blue collar workforce. Blue collar is really a term that we use to describe, you know, our people who work in our warehouses, delivery boys, and, uh, we have a very large army of, uh, these individuals. So getting their loyalty, getting their love…

AI assessment note: “So that was my biggest learning... In terms of, uh, challenges”

Q While managing people, you are hard or disciplined, or you let people manage themselves?

A Largely, I let people manage themselves. My approach is trust people, but I would say to trust people, you need to have people who are trustworthy. So it's a combination of the two. Over a period of time, you have to create people who are trustworthy. So it took me some time to develop the team at Big Basket. Some people survived, some people did not survive. So in the beginning, while building the team, I worked with them with a lot of intensity. To set the ground rules that this is the way we get things done. This is the way we solve problems. Once I find that people are aligned, I step back and let them run the show. So today at this point of time, Tanuja and Neelam run the show at Big Basket. I don't run the show. I'm right behind. They interact with the founders. They take all the decisions, every single decision they take. If they need to consult me, they will come and consult me. If they don't need to consult me, they don't consult me. So they have complete freedom. They run the show now.

AI assessment note: “Largely, I let people manage themselves. My approach is trust people”

Q So Sanjay and Hari, you know, would love to start with the story of your friendship, and what gave birth to the book?

A So I think Sanjay and I have been friends at school, you know, and in school you always have a best friend, and Sanjay happened to be my best friend in primary school. So we were there from first grade to the fifth grade, after which Sanjay left for Bangalore. We grew up in a small town during those years in Orissa, A very, you know, nondescript township where a public sector undertaking was located. Sanjay moved to Bangalore after our fifth grade, and I continued to remain there, and we met after we turned 50, and, uh, we continued to remain friends, and at some point of time, we decided, you know, why not do something together? And, uh, as we talked about, uh, you know, what was happening during the pandemic, you know, life turned upside down in many ways for all of us. And this was the first time that, you know, many of us were seeing a crisis of this magnitude and these kinds of crisis one doesn't see more than once in a lifetime. So I think we spotted this early and we realized that, uh, there is a mega trend, you know, taking shape and, uh, lives are being turned upside down. People are adopting or adapting to new, uh, normals, new ways of life. So we thought, you know, why don't we write a book? And then we thought what the theme should be. Then we realized that, you know, while the pandemic has Created a crisis for all of us. We have also dealt with, uh, different types…

AI assessment note: “Sanjay happened to be my best friend in primary school”

Q So you have been a lucky charm, I would say, for all those companies. They got either acquired or went public. Was there a strategy, you know, to, to figure out the next unicorn and then join them, or it was more by, you would, you would say, circumstances coming and fitting out?

A I think it's a bit of a mix of the two, which is that I always loved working with interesting people. So that's the only thing I look for in a company. Are the people that I'm going to work with Going to be interesting. So that's one criteria. This is the only important criteria for me. And my strength also was in scaling companies. So I joined companies after a product market fit was reasonably well established. I didn't join very early stage startups. So by the very fact that I joined a company after the product market fit was established, there was a good probability that there would be an exit. So it was not just a lucky charm, but the fact that I joined companies where the product market fit was well established and I joined companies Where I love to work.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a bit of a mix of the two”

Q What were few key decisions at Taxi for Show would like to share us while hiring or while scaling the company?

A While scaling the company, we found, you know, at an early stage, we had hired people with a background of taxi, running taxi companies. Then we found that taxi for sure is not that kind of a taxi company. It was a technology company. So people who came from, you know, Meru kind of organizations and joined us, they had their own limitations. They were limited by their thinking. They could not redraw their canvas. At some point of time, we had to let them go. We had to bring in people who knew nothing about the taxi business, who could believe that we could do everything. So we hired some great people after that. So once we had to let go of people who came from the taxi background, we brought people who were basic problem solvers, basic smarts who could think out of the box and solve problems.

AI assessment note: “we had to let them go. We had to bring in people who knew nothing”

Q Big basket has four to five co-founders. How do four to five co-founders bring clarity of purpose among themselves and in decision making? Because we have seen in many startups with the large teams, the co-founder conflicts somehow de-accelerates the startups.

A So the way this works is I would say is that, uh, the co-founders are a bunch of mature people. Then I think this is not likely to happen. Mature by mature. I really mean you need to be self-aware. So for example, if there are some issues or topics that I don't understand, and I know I don't understand, then it's a great place to be in because then I won't feel that I should be involved in decision-making on these topics. So I think all the five founders at BigBasket are very self-aware. Not all five of them may be equally competent. There will be some people who are more competent than the others. Not all five are involved with every decision. There are about two or three founders who may be core, who may be involved in every single decision, fundraising, everything else, and the other founders are there playing their respective roles. As long as you are self-aware, I don't think you will have conflict. Self-aware means you know that I don't need to be involved in everything. These are my limitations, and this is what I will do.

AI assessment note: “Not all five are involved with every decision. There are about two or three”

Q What role do you play in Fundamentum Partnership?

A So, um, I play multiple roles. So for example, in all the companies that I've worked for, the placeholder for me was HR, which is people. But then coming from an engineering background and having done an MBA, I understand multiple things. I understand finance. I understand technology. I understand marketing. So in many of these companies, I did multiple things besides people. So at Fundamentum as well, my core role is about people, which is Pre-investment. Evaluating whether, you know, the teams that we are to back are the right kind of teams or the founder dynamics. Are they capable of building a great organization? Do they have the tenacity to go all the way? Are they capable of hiring people who are better than them, for instance? So evaluating the team before making an investment. And also looking at the organization structure. Are they structured correctly? Are they thinking about the business correctly? Are they solving the right kind of problems? Is this, is this scalable? Is this team capable of scaling and growing it, making it big? So that's what I do pre-investing and post-investing. I help them with people issues. They might have questions. They might have questions about structure. They might have questions about, you know, how to deal with how to build culture, how to deal with people who are not performing, how to deal with people who are Performing, but not alig…

AI assessment note: “at Fundamentum as well, my core role is about people, which is Pre-investment”

Q What were your three key learnings from your stint at Taxi For Sure?

A My biggest learning was that, uh, age and experience is often overplayed. I worked for someone who was much younger than me. At that point of time, he must have been 32, 33, and I must have been 47 or something around that 47, 48 or something. And, uh, I was a bit apprehensive in the beginning, but then I realized that it was really fun. He was one of the finest CEOs that I ever worked for. So the biggest lesson for me was that, uh, Age and experience is often overplayed. Many times youth have ideas which are absolutely amazing. They understand many issues better than people who have experience. So that for me was the biggest lesson at taxi for sure. The other lesson for me was that, uh, when you're building a business with strong network effects, where, you know, the winner would take all, the first mover has a massive advantage. If you're in such a business, then it's important to be backed by deep pocketed investors. In some ways, I think Ola was one year ahead of us, and that gave them a huge runway. So you had Sequoia backing them, you had Tiger backing them, you had SoftBank backing them, whereas Taxi for Sure started a year later, and we couldn't get the kind of deep pocketed investors. But having said that, I think we had an amazing exit. Sold the company for two hundred million dollars. We didn't have money to pay salaries two months down the road. And we would have sh…

AI assessment note: “My biggest learning was that, uh, age and experience is often overplayed.”

Q If a young college student or a professional want to join a startup and is looking to join the next Flipkart, the next taxi for show, how should he identify such founders or such startups?

A I think it's very difficult to say this because when someone joined Flipkart, I don't think anyone knew that Flipkart would be sold for sixteen billion dollars, right? I don't think anyone knew. So I think, um, you have to be passionate about working in a chaotic place. Startups are inherently chaotic places, and you have to thrive in chaos. If you can't thrive in chaos, you shouldn't join a startup. My only advice about what kind of a startup you should join is, you should like the founders. If you like the founders, because you're going to work with them very closely every day, is it fun to work with them? Are they ethical? Are they good people? Are they fun to work with? I think those three or four questions, if the answer is yes, Then I think you should join. You shouldn't worry about whether it'll be the next flip card or not, because that's impossible to predict.

AI assessment note: “You shouldn't worry about whether it'll be the next flip card or not”

Q What are the other markets Uh, is fundamental partnership investing in right now or is looking to invest in 2019, 2020?

A So we're looking at multiple opportunities. Consumer Internet is one broad area. Then we are looking at B to B and we're also looking at content, but in all these three, it's typically marketplace related. It's not product related. So for example, consumer internet marketplace could be, um, you know, urban travel. It could be any form of urban travel. There are several companies which are, you know, doing bounce, for example, is into urban travel. They do scooters. You know, I'm sure you know that. And a travel triangle, for example, falls into this consumer internet marketplace. Retail could fall into this. Then also B to B also transaction related marketplace. So basically a marketplace, but in B to B could be in consumer internet or in the content space.

AI assessment note: “Consumer Internet is one broad area. Then we are looking at B to B”

Q What are the key processes if you would like to share some three or four, which you have implemented at Big Basket? And which have helped big baskets scale rapidly.

A I think, uh, you know, in terms of, um, processes, I would say you should build some foundational or fundamental processes, which will help you scale. The foundation should be extremely strong. So in terms of foundation, we have something called prevention of sexual harassment. A lot of startups, you must have seen cases where founders were involved in harassment. There were other senior employees in big basket. You would not find a single case like this for the simple reason, right from the beginning, We created a policy of prevention of sexual harassment, communicated this across the company, and we have women not just in corporate. Women in corporate are typically well-educated. They're aware of their rights, and if they're harassed, they can easily have recourse. They can approach people outside big basket, but we have women working in the warehouses as packers. They are people who come from backgrounds where they're used to being harassed, so they would never even know that they need to complain. Even those women have been made aware of their rights. The day a woman joins the HR head in the region in Nasik, wherever we are in, in Kochi, it could be in Kolkata, it could be in Pune, it could be in Lucknow. A woman joins, within 24 hours the HR head would meet her, tell her about her rights, tell her what records she has, give her the phone numbers of internal complaint commi…

AI assessment note: “in terms of foundation, we have something called prevention of sexual harassment.”