Varun Alagh

Co-Founder and CEO, Honasa Consumer · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveinvestor@varunalagh ↗LinkedIn ↗honasa.in ↗

Varun Alagh co-founded Honasa Consumer (the parent company of Mamaearth, The Derma Co., and Aqualogica) with his wife Ghazal Alagh in 2016, scaling it to an IPO on Indian stock exchanges. Prior to entrepreneurship, he spent over a decade in marketing and brand management leadership roles at Hindustan Unilever, Diageo, and Coca-Cola.

10statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 15said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 3 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Varun argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Mamaearth claims to be profitable and IPO-ready

“From a from a company you know, readiness perspective, I think we are, we would be ready as of yesterday also, right, from a, Sai is the fact that we are profitable, but we just don't feel that we need to raise from public markets as we speak because the busin…”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 23:10 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Varun Alagh on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said10 What others said15 Episodes1

Everything Varun Alagh said on the Neon Show that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported

Mamaearth claims to be profitable and IPO-ready

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 23:10 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Insight

Scaling D2C brands should build custom tech instead of using SaaS

“We'd rather build a strong custom-owned tech stack than only rely on, on SaaS based tech stacks as we scale.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 28:34 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Insight

Direct-to-consumer channels provide data control and scalability

“One control over on your own data experience for the consumer. Is far higher when it comes to DTC. Secondly, your ability to scale is, is far higher because it's again a hundred percent market share channel, right? And thirdly, your dependence is, is reducing …”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 16:02 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Insight

D2C brands must keep marketing and product management in-house

“On marketing side, we've always done everything in-house, and we always believe that, you know, marketing and product are core competence for a company like this, and hence that strength should lie internally.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 29:04 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Assertion Supported

Mamaearth has expanded to 10,000 offline retail stores

“And we have expanded to almost 10,000 stores now.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 16:38 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Disclosure

Mamaearth raised seed funding at 25-30 lakh monthly revenue

“So Fireside we raised largely you know, when we when we were seeing what you call product market fit, right? So I would say we were at revenue run rates about 25, 30 odd lakhs a month, right? About six months into our journey, seeing really good feedback on ou…”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 17:05 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Disclosure

Mamaearth raised from Stellaris upon hitting one crore monthly revenue

“And then Stellaris round happened when we had hit the one crore a month kind of mark.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 17:49 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Disclosure

Mamaearth raised from Sequoia nearing 100 crore annual revenue

“And then Sequoia happened once we were closer to a hundred crore run rate which is where we saw, you know, them as a great partner who's got strong learnings around taking, you know, building companies from a hundred to a thousand crore kind of run rates.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 18:15 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Disclosure

Honasa Consumer will continue multi-brand expansion over five years

“After seeing the success of TDC we are fairly confident that this is an ongoing strategy that, that we'll continue to execute over the next five years.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 21:56 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Ghazal Alagh pitched 700 influencers directly in three months

“I remember Ghazal did about 700 conversations in three months, which were direct conversations, selling and telling our story.”

Varun Alagh Mar 22, 2021 ▶ 38:17 @mamaearthindia1509 Founders on D2C growth, ft. Ghazal & Varun Alagh

The other half of the tape: Varun Alagh's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 14 times in 6 episodes on the Neon Show. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Siddhartha Ahluwalia 4 Kanwaljit Singh 2 Siddhartha (Siddharth) 1 Rohit Bansal 1 Kunal Bahl 1 Ishaan Mittal 1