The Exchanges

Q Do you think that's the problem? The smart ones are going out of the country?

A That's one of the problems. But I, I think that gaming in India has a double problem. So first, yes, uh, there are a lot of people in India when they get the, an opportunity to, like, seven X, 10 X their salary by going abroad, and they have that opportunity because they've developed a skill set here, then they'll, they'll, they'll jump. I think the other thing is more of a cultural issue that I have discovered over the past few years that I've been here in India, which is that gaming, at least, and you guys please disagree with me, but in my experience, it seems like gaming is not looked upon favorably by a lot of Indian parents. And so, when somebody wants to go into gaming, they really have to want to go into gaming. Um, but otherwise, I think a lot of the parents, they typically would want to go to join, like, some high tech firm in Amazon, a Google, a Facebook, a company like that, rather than join a gaming company. And so the image of a gaming company, unlike in the West, right? Like, in the West, joining a game company is looked upon very favorably for a number of reasons, right? It's, um, generally, Like leads in terms of innovation. A lot of the people that go, that are in gaming actually are highly coveted by Facebook, Google, and the high tech companies, but that kind of feeling and that kind of, that, that kind of, um, orientation towards gaming in the US versus Ind…

AI assessment note: “That's one of the problems. But I, I think that gaming in India has a double problem.”

Q for a girl? Like, I will never know this because I can't resonate with how a girl would feel, but when a girl gets male attention and is appreciated or is wanted from a very like, Emotional lens is wanted by many people. Desirable. What does it do to you? Like, how do you feel? Is it validation of something? Is it an insecurity going away? How do you feel?

A So for me, it was an insecurity going away and me becoming more confident in my appearance. For example, you have farewells, right? And schools, farewell parties, et cetera. And you have to dress up and you have these events which are happening ramp walks, et cetera. All the kids participate. I never used to participate in that. I never had the confidence to go up the stage. I never had the confidence that if I dress up and style my hair, I will end up looking good. So that, that emotion was so strong that I used to avoid events like these. My mother realized that I was trying to avoid some of these events because I had, I was image conscious and I felt I wasn't beautiful. Is when she brought in a lot of magazines at home and she started talking to me about a few models and I was not interested in that space at all. And just for me to feel a little more confident on how I looked. She started complimenting me at home. For anything, like any weird thing that I'm doing.

AI assessment note: “for me, it was an insecurity going away and me becoming more confident”

Q How do you study U.S. regulation? Where do you find it? Online? Free?

A Absolutely freely available. Freely available. You study, you can study U.S., you can study Europe. I did all of that. Google was my best friend. And studying these products, for example, going to an honest company's website and seeing what are the ingredients that they're putting in their product. What is the source? You take the name of that ingredient. You put it on Google. It tells you what that ingredient does. Why is it used for? What is the ideal percentage, et cetera, et cetera. So the only thing that I understood out of all of that study was the fact that one coconut based cleansers exist, which can make the shampoo far more milder and non irritant in nature, beat for the eyes beat for the skin. And I wanted to replace the harsh surfactant systems, Which were banned in countries outside of India, but were being used in the baby products here with the coconut based surfactants. And then after that, I had to reach out to people who could help me build formulations. And when you're starting out.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely freely available. Freely available... Google was my best friend.”

Q Same problem, new problems, because once a problem is solved, It becomes less intellectually stimulating, right?

A Yeah. No, which means new problems. I think, which is, which is the whole point I was going back to, right? That, um, for me, I last five years, I had to change myself fundamentally to try and make sure that every day I reviewed the same thing because businesses are inherently boring at some level, right? So you have to make sure that there's a 30% excitement, which is solving a new problem, uh, creating a product feature or one of those things. But 70% of it is just ops, right? Like doing the same job a little bit better every day. Um, and that did not come naturally to me. I think I had to train myself to become that person.

AI assessment note: “30% excitement, which is solving a new problem... But 70% of it is just ops”

Q How did you go from your PhD in this to starting to create Hydrogen and Aussys your company?

A Oh my God. Um, I had finished my PhD, and, um, I was working for my professor, my advisor's engineering company. It was an engineering procurement and construction company. That's what chemical engineers do. Technologies out of our lab needed to be pitched to, and we were heavily working with the PSUs. So you need to go out and talk about what value the technology can bring, and that was me in the business development role. Um, in between all of this, I had my professor's friend, Who is very wealthy, but not formally educated. He has a sort of sugar mill, which runs one half of the year producing ethanol and the other half making sugar. And one day his plant was shut down and he didn't quite understand because for some bizarre reason, the notification was in English, not in Marathi, as you would expect coming from Maharashtra. And he came, came to my professor and he said, what is going on? And he said, you've been illegally dumping your wastewater. Effluent, as it's called, and he said, I have no idea. I give a dude money to sort of take it away from my side. This man who has been collecting money from my professor's sort of friend has been going around the block and dumping it right there because, hey, somebody paid me to take care of it. I took care of it. Um, that's when my professor gave me a sort of brief to say, what do you think are the pathways, as it's called in sort …

AI assessment note: “finished my PhD, and, um, I was working for my professor, my advisor's engineering company”

Q Do you think at some point with scale, it would make sense for you guys, if you own the charging infrastructure, to also generate your own electricity, maybe using solar?

A So actually that's the plan. The energy cycle is basically generation, distribution, storage, and then application. In college, we spent many years trying to work on generation. We tried to build engines, ah, very, very high efficiency engines. Ah, we succeeded technically, not commercially though. So, and later on, the idea that we had was to build battery packs, which is storage. And you wanted to build a swapping network, which is distribution. So we justified to ourselves by saying, yaar, energy is not working on generation, but we are working on distribution and storage. This is Ether Energy, the distribution and storage company. And later we built, we were building a scooter on the side to put that battery pack on and we fell in love with the scooter. So we became a vehicle company, but I kind of still think like we do run a fairly large fast charging network. Actually in two wheelers, it's the largest fast charging network in the country.

AI assessment note: “So actually that's the plan.”

Q But why did you think 90,000? You should have been like, freeze, check their credit score, charge 5000 bucks a month.

A So let me tell you the problems that we ran into, right? Uh, and we said 1500 rupees plan, 1800 rupees plan, lot of complications we came up with. Enormous, massive community pullback, like pushback, like, because the biggest feedback that we got was that vehicle is still such a passionate, emotional purchase for me. I need to own this. So I'm not going to pay you a lifetime fee for this. Okay. You tell me when does this EMI stop? I mean, if you create EMI, then it's EMI. Like I've been trying to make a subscription product and make a lot of money out of this. They're like, you tell us two years, three years, four years, when does the EMI stop? So ultimately I need to own this battery.

AI assessment note: “Enormous, massive community pullback... vehicle is still such a passionate, emotional purchase”

Q But the point he made is so relevant. I feel like With a corporation disseminating news, they're bound to be biased in one form or another. I think the role of a content creator in getting their actual story out is so incredibly important for the world, right?

A Yeah, it's independent thought needs to be encouraged. But I also think that, look, it's easy to say that everybody should be able to voice their opinion. Um, but what I see your opinion is, A, not necessary, not necessarily the best thing for business, which most, let's be honest, most content creators are in the pursuit of being brand friendly enough that they can make a living, that they can make a living, uh, But I also say that you want to be king first before you become a philosopher, right? Like Shah Rukh said this, right? So you want, you want to feel secure financially before you're able to voice your thought very, very publicly. At least this is what I have maintained that I think if I feel extremely secure financially, it actually the thing that you're buying by making money is freedom to express.

AI assessment note: “independent thought needs to be encouraged. But I also think that, look”

Q Supply chain, am I missing anything? Is there a way to negotiate efficiencies in the supply chain? To reduce the cost of goods? Where do you buy supplies from as a restaurant owner?

A Multiple vendors. All of us rely on, Hyper Pure has been started by Zomato that is trying to, you know, become a platform. But at this point in time, the vast majority of restaurants around the country are buying from individual vendors that they've had relationships for years. And it's a good thing. You should encourage this local farmer, local vendor. These guys, the meat supplier, the local butcher, the local farmer, the local vegetable guy, even though he's a consolidator, You know, it goes to the Monday every morning, picks up the stuff, does that effort, does that value add, and then gives it to you. I think that should be supported, but there are now alternatives. There are larger platforms like Hyperpure that are providing a platform.

AI assessment note: “Multiple vendors. All of us rely on, Hyper Pure has been started by Zomato”

Q Main points one needs to keep in mind while opening a restaurant. One big question, location. How do you guys narrow down on location? Because you've all said location, location, location. How do you, what do you use individually to figure out the location?

A I think all of us will have some similar points and some overlaps. Um, I am a little bit old school in this sense when it comes to a restaurant location. A physical offline restaurant location. I would like to visit at least once or multiple times if possible and go with the gut. I do rely on data, but like I said, the data is fairly, ah, you know, it's, it's not really that accurate and it might be stale. It might be stale data that you're getting from these agencies. You should go and see Other restaurants in the area. Absolutely. That's, that's what, that's how you do a site survey. A site survey is a two day exercise. It's not usually a one because you're going to invest five, six, two, three, five, six crore rupees into a restaurant. You should at least give it two days. Makes logical sense. Sit there, put the time in. And I don't think, even though I have a great business development team and people I really trust, uh, and, and, and sometimes, especially for overseas locations, I'm not able to visit. I think it's important if you, especially if you're starting out to spend that time and focus on that.

AI assessment note: “I would like to visit at least once or multiple times if possible and go with the gut.”

Q So which way do you think India will go? India is at three percent. Do you think we'll go the China way? Where there seems to be a balance of dine-in, QSR, all of that working, but QSR has only grown to 20% and stopped there. I think that's a cultural difference. You think India is more going to mimic China than America because culturally we are similar?

A My vote goes to China. It's, it's, it's, look, in America, fast food works because it's labor arbitrage. You go to a supermarket, you buy the ingredients, you chop it, you cook it, you stir it, you plate it, you wash the dishes after that. It's gonna cost you more than going to a QSR, ordering that, that burger, that fry, that shake. It's gonna be cheaper, faster, quicker. And in India, it's not that yet. It's still cheaper to make food at home. It's the labor or the labor arbitrage is still not considered that important, right? They're always going to be, uh, somebody at home who's, who's happy to cook for you, who's going to happily clean the dishes for you. So that, that price arbitrage is not there. So the value seekers will continue.

AI assessment note: “My vote goes to China.”

Q Yeah. Guys, staffing. Where do you hire restaurant staff from? And is there anything In particular, you can do to retain that stuff. Are there any hacks in this industry? Riyaz, you wanna go first?

A Um, I think that, uh, uh, we have, fortunately, I think word of mouth as a good employer is very, very important. Referrals for us are the number one, uh, recruitment source. Um, We encourage our staff to bring us more staff. That is the shortest and fastest way of, of getting good quality people. Of course, you need to have a robust training program. Uh, you need to know, okay, you know, what do you want to put somebody on the floor? What can you do to get them on the floor? What are the basic skills they need? I am not a big believer in, um, in education. I think it's completely a waste of time in, in the hospitality business.

AI assessment note: “Referrals for us are the number one, uh, recruitment source.”

Q So basically, so this message of what you want to signal, is it authentic and organically Personality type, which determines what you want to signal or is it what is cool in society at that point of time? Is that a manipulation too?

A I genuinely believe it goes on three steps. Okay. First is because you just want to become cool amongst your peers. So whatever is trending, you want to do that. That's certain level of signaling. Once you're done with that, then it goes with your preferences and choices. And then third is to achieve objectives that you want to achieve. So first example is like, If I am, let's say a 50,000 rupee to one lakh rupee income person, I want to buy a really expensive shoe to show off my friends because that's the physical value because like, this is cool. This new Jordan is becoming cool. I want to show that because it's trending. I want to show that. Once I reached like an upper level of income or whatever, maybe a taste.

AI assessment note: “I genuinely believe it goes on three steps. Okay. First is because you just want”

Q How important is it for somebody starting brand zero to one to be able to create content and create community?

A I think that's the way forward. And I tell you a logical reason behind it. Take care. The biggest reason that I feel is point of sale. Every time the majority of influence happens on point of sale. Okay. There's obviously different digital discovery, different, different percentage, but the large majority happens on the point of sale. So earlier the point of sale used to happen on Kirana stores, wherever. So there would be, so think about it in a random day. I ran out of my toothpaste. I use Colgate. I go to my Kirana store, and there's no Colgate available. He's like, but I have close up. I'll buy close up and get home. That's point of sale. I'm influenced. If I like the flavor done, I'm never using Colgate again. Okay. So that's used to be the old way of doing it. The second wave, which I think we're going through right now, was retail and marketplaces, where you go in search of something, and you get convinced to buy something as well. That is Big Bazaar way, Amazon way, or all the places where you explore certain things. Right. So that's where the point of sale used to happen. Now where the point of sale is, the influence is happening, on right there on the content. So you're exploring Instagram every day, you're seeing, or YouTube right now, you're seeing, hey, this person is using this mixer, he looks good, I'll see it. He clicks it, then and there, Instagram auto-fills y…

AI assessment note: “I think that's the way forward. And I tell you a logical reason behind it.”

Q Then have we answered our previous conversation via this? Creators are taking away The time for content, which previously people spent on newspapers, TV news.

A To some extent, yes. No, because you know, you have to keep one thing in mind. Look, there was a point in time when there was only the, like the whole family would get around the TV and watch it from like seven to nine PM, for instance. That's gone today. Consumption is disaggregated in so many different ways. Like, it's, you know, nowadays, for instance, there are still peaks of consumptions, but that distribution is a lot more sort of flatter than it would be when there was only TV, or that you'd only read the newspaper in the morning, or you'd listen to the radio in the morning. Uh, or you'd carry the radio and listen to it in your commute. But today, just because of the smartphone and because of all these platforms, consumption of media and entertainment has never been more disaggregated.

AI assessment note: “To some extent, yes. No, because you know, you have to keep one thing in mind.”

Q how resilient you were in the face of adversity, even when we were at the cremation place and here and there, uh, you were, you were like breaking down, but At no point have I seen you through all of this lose that drive. Like you, you still are as passionate talking about work today as you were at any other point. And what is that that keeps you going?

A You know, I guess you have to be a little philosophical about life. Yes, I was devastated, and it's left a huge void in my life. My life was never going to be the same, because the two most special people in my life have, are no longer with me. And I really miss them every moment. But the fact of the matter is that we all know that life is unpredictable. Um, and you have to live your life to the fullest. My late mother used to say that, look, don't waste your life. Life has a finite time. Make use of every minute. And the, the way she said it to me just before she died was she said, Kiran, I'm not going to be there for you forever. And when I go, don't grieve for me. And if you have to grieve for me, don't grieve for too long, because you have a lot going for you, and you have to make use of your life, um, because there's not enough of time left for you to do everything you want to. So don't waste life. Life is not to be wasted. It's to be lived, she said. And that I thought was a very powerful message she gave me. That gave me a lot of strength. And so today, um, I feel that yes, all of us have to come to terms with the fact that We just don't know what tomorrow brings. And we've got to live our life to the fullest. We've got to give life the best we can. And we have to make the most we can in terms of what we're trying to do with our lives. So if, if we keep sort of wasting o…

AI assessment note: “My late mother used to say that, look, don't waste your life.”

Q Why is it addictive? And why is education not? What needs to change?

A Gamification. Like, like if you, you know, there's this game called Jailbreak on Roblox. Simple game, super simple graphics. But one is the social aspect element of it. The second is the gamification element of it. If you read this book called Actionable Gamification, it breaks down every single aspect of why you get addicted to a game. You, people play games that they win. So today, if they are sitting in a coaching center, where you don't even get entry to a best teacher's class, because they say you are number hundred, that won't work. But if there is an AI app that says that, so the AI app can actually say that, Nikhil, you want to learn this? It can real time generate a lesson for you. By the way, this is not happening, but we have to make it happen. And can start giving you questions. So basically, and they have to give you some positive reinforcement, because if you start playing, if FIFA only had world class mode, and didn't have a amateur mode, you would never play FIFA.

AI assessment note: “Gamification... people play games that they win.”

Q school celebrities, Bollywood, cricketers, do you think that connection has somewhere gotten lost because people have assumed In their minds that they are for sale in a way, and rarely ever do they believe in the product they're selling. And will the trend in the future be that brands do not go to Bollywood or cricket, but they go to more micro influencers in a way who are more authentic?

A I think It is happening slightly, but I think that's still not the prominent reason. Like the reason people go to influencers, because earlier, by the way, it was binary. Either you have a big celebrity or you don't. Right. And until you become large enough to afford a celebrity, you can't do it. Now people can start on day one. You could be a very small one. You find a small influencer who connects with your philosophy. And people keep graduating. There's still very few influencers who have the same following as celebrities. So what you're saying still hasn't happened. But I believe, by the way, it will happen soon. In the next few years, some large celebrities will have the same following as, ah, some large influencers will have the same following as celebrities.

AI assessment note: “So what you're saying still hasn't happened. But I believe, by the way, it will happen soon.”

Q Which was the biggest hit of marketing last year? What worked best?

A So, Diwali campaign did very well, which is where we did localization. So, we kind of, we had different celebrities for different parts of the country. Like, we had Swaro Ganguly for West Bengal, we had Ram Charan for a certain state in South India. So, I'm saying it's a, it's basically we went very local and we saw that to be much more effective than have one person who appeals to all the country because we realized it's close to impossible to find one person who appeals to everyone. You can find cricketers, but they still appeal to males and not to females. So it's, it's very, very hard. So I'm saying we have, we found localization to be very effective.

AI assessment note: “Diwali campaign did very well, which is where we did localization.”

Q like governments across the world can afford to raise interest rates beyond a certain point. And say the World Bank, for instance, is putting top down money into different economies, which are again, kind of saturating in the top and not really trickling down to the bottom in a fair manner. Why do we then make the case for income inequality really going down over the next decade or two?

A Six hundred million people in Africa don't have electricity today. And I don't mean, ah, inadequate electricity. None. Black. No electricity. What I'm talking about is not giving them one light, one fan with a solar cell on their roof. That to me is useful for quality of life. Basic. But not useful for productive use. We're talking about productive use of energy. And so we've committed to connect three hundred million people with the African Development Bank by 2030. As of June, we would be at 50 already. We got a line of sight to 200 or so. We'll find our way to, if not 302 50. That would be two and a half times what we connected in the last 10 years. That's not only at the top, that's going right to the people who want to set up a barber shop, or a chicken hatchery, or a farmer. You see what I mean? And so actually our money doesn't go to the top of the pyramid. Our money is being oriented towards this or healthcare. We're talking about getting 1.5 billion people access to better primary healthcare by 2030. Again, by this middle of this year, you would be at four hundred million. Now what does that mean by primary health care? A clinic near you, Where you can go where there's a nurse, a medical diagnostic technician, and a midwife. So you can actually, with technology, get access to a doctor who may be remote. He's not in the village, but he's there, shared by these villages.…

AI assessment note: “actually our money doesn't go to the top of the pyramid.”

Q No, thank you for doing this. Everybody knows you, but if we could go through, like, the big events of your life, and very briefly, just to set context again, could you tell us how you look at your life from the very beginning, from when you were younger up until today?

A Okay. Um, my dad was a jazz musician. My mom Uh, was a sort of saved on mom. Uh, I was raised, and uh, I didn't have any brothers or sisters. Um, it was a loving family. Um, it was, um, not poor, not, it was lower middle class. Um, I did jobs when I was young. Uh, I, one of those jobs was caddying for, at a golf course. And because I caddied at a golf course at the time when there was a stock market boom, The people I caddied with, I would have conversations with, and I took the money I earned, six dollars a bag, I carried two bags, 12 dollars for a round. When I got 50 dollars, I would put it in the stock market. And so I started, um, playing around in the stock market, much like you're describing our audience does. And, um, the first stock I bought I bought only because it was the only company I ever heard of that was selling for less than five dollars a share. And I thought, well, then I can buy more shares. So if it goes up, I'll make more money, which of course made no sense. But it was a company that, uh, was about to go bankrupt, but another company acquired it and it tripled in value. And I thought, this is easy. It's not easy. But I got hooked on the markets at 12.

AI assessment note: “my dad was a jazz musician. My mom Uh, was a sort of saved”

Q me a bit about Starlink and how the tech works? Because somebody I was speaking to, uh, I don't know if you know this company called Nita out of San Francisco. Uh, they're trying to replace network engineers, but so he was telling me about how intensely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in a place with not as many people. Can you explain how it works?

A Yeah, so, so I think, um, there's several thousand satellites in low-earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound, um, in these, you know, they're zipping around the Earth, basically, and, um, they're, uh, they're at an altitude of about 550 kilometers, um, which is generally called low-earth orbit, Um, because they're, they're at lowest orbit, they're, um, the latency is, is low. Like the, the distance, because the distance is, is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite, uh, at 36,000 kilometers. Um, so you've, you've got, um, Thousands of satellites providing, ah, low latency, high speed internet throughout the world, and, um, and they are interconnected as well, so there's, there are laser links between the satellites, so it forms sort of a laser mesh, so that the, if, let's say, ah, let's say if cables are damaged or cut, like fiber cables, the satellites can communicate between each other, um, and provide connectivity Uh, even if, uh, there's, there's, uh, the cables are cut. So, for example, when the Red Sea cables were cut, uh, I think a few months ago, the satellite, the, the Starlink satellite network continued to function without a hitch. So it's, it's particularly helpful for disaster areas. So if, but if an area has been hit with, uh, some kind of natural disaster, floods or fires or, uh, earthquakes, that, that tends to damage the, …

AI assessment note: “there's several thousand satellites in low-earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound”

Q So you did engineering at IIT. And then came to the US for your masters at Carnegie Mellon in biomedical engineering, and then business in Stanford. Which part of this academic career formed you or shaped you today?

A You know, I would say every step was about a particular goal. Engineering at IIT was because I was interested in technology, and electrical engineering seemed pretty damn interesting. There was nothing called computer science back then. That was, I joined IIT in 1971. Um, so that was interesting, and then I got curious about biomedical engineering. Um, there wasn't really such a discipline. We did some projects in India in biomedical engineering, but there was no biomedical engineering department anywhere in India. And I got involved with a professor there, Professor Guha, and we did some things between IIT Delhi and All India Institute of Medical Sciences. I was curious, and then I just said, ah, well, master's in biomedical engineering would be cool. And so, I came to the U.S. to do my master's, but my real goal was to get to Silicon Valley and start a company.

AI assessment note: “I would say every step was about a particular goal.”

Q Who do you think if you were to categorize somebody as competition you really look up to in Bollywood, who would it be?

A Uh, so my age group are below me, right? I wouldn't say the Khans or anything like that. Um, though when I started, I was like, Amitabha is my competition, why should I say? You know, the new guys. Um, they're such fine actors. I like Vicky Kaushal's work a lot. Ranveer Singh. Um, yeah, you know, it's, it's the opportunity and the film, I've realized that. You know, you have a, an actor which you don't quite appreciate right now, but him in a right film at the right time will just change it for you. Uh, but as of right now, two actors that I really like is Vicky Kaushal. Ranveer Singh. Uh, and I like Karthik also. You know, I think Karthik has something very charming on screen. You know, he's got a charming personality.

AI assessment note: “two actors that I really like is Vicky Kaushal. Ranveer Singh.”

Q Okay. So you started, uh, with the Thiel Fellowship money with your friend Anuj, Oravel, later converted to OYO. When did the scaling happen?

A First year was very small. Like I think, in 2014, we grew from two hotels to maybe 10, 15 hotels. Still a lot, but not like massive. I think the real growth happened from 20 14 all the way to 20 17, which is where we went from a few hotels in one city to becoming one of the most prominent hotel brands in India in the economy and economy plus kind of segment. 20. 19 is when the scaling then happened globally. We went from being an India brand to becoming a globally prominent brand. So for example, just in Europe, we managed 150,000 holiday homes. So we have a fairly large business in Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, and few of these geographies. So I can relate with getting to the cities out of the flight to your hotel, do your job and come back. So you don't have.

AI assessment note: “I think the real growth happened from 20 14 all the way to 20 17”

Q So if I were new, if I were a 20 year old boy starting something out to build distribution, how often should I post? What duration works today? What is the path of least resistance to get distribution?

A So I think a lot of people in this chat table make long videos, including you. And I don't know who the hell is still watching this video. You must have a lot of time on your, on your life, ok? But the only and the best way to get distribution today is to make YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels that are 59 seconds exactly, which is the one minute guy. And I think short content gets you reach, and after you get the reach, you should go deep by creating the podcast. But you shouldn't start By creating a podcast. Because Amy, you had fame from other places. That's why your podcast works. But if, if there's a nobody now starting a podcast, unfortunately, that's going to kill their dreams.

AI assessment note: “best way to get distribution today is to make YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels... 59 seconds”

Q Is that the key then today to build a brand? Is it content and community? Not just for influencer led brand, but all brands.

A I think it is a large part of it, but it is not the only part of it. I think it's a big part of brand building between 20 and a hundred crores because it's a less, it's a more. So again, I'll give you an example. For us, we do a lot of our brand building through Men's XP and Ideva. It doesn't cost us. We own the content platforms. For the 20 to a hundred crores, it's the most effective way to do it, because you spend one, two percent of your revenue, as opposed to four, five percent of your revenue, and you get to the same kind of reach. Right? And, and that is an easier and more cost effective way of doing it. I think the hard part and the boring part, especially if you're more online, offline also, I think we, I'm sure you will have added points on the online side, knowing how to do growth hacking or performance marketing on Amazon, Flipkart, Mintra, Google, Facebook is a core skill between 20 and a hundred.

AI assessment note: “I think it is a large part of it, but it is not the only part”

Q And when did Unacademy become all that it is in terms of scale? The same question I asked them. When did you realize Unacademy is big?

A No, so we had that Um, intrinsic optimism that we have to make this big. I mean, one guy is, he was the assistant collector of Jabalpur. I mean, he's leaving that. Uh, and then, um, you know, we, we, we knew that this is all, we are going all in, like working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We, we had to go all in and we had to make it big. The question wasn't so, see, people don't realize a lot of times we went through at least 10 pivots. Before we realized our business model in 2019. So 2015 is when we started the company, when Roman quit, when Himesh quit, when I quit. Both of Himesh and I quit Commonflow, Roman quit IS. Four years, it took us 10 plus pivots to realize what's our business model. But once we cracked the business model, this is, I remember 2019, we were on a founder's retreat and we, we start seeing revenue numbers that we are doing 30 lakhs a day, 40 lakhs a day. And this is the first time we had seen revenue PMF. We had seen views PMF. We were creating content. So we had seen that journey that our videos were doing hundred million views a month. So that journey we had already seen. But when we started seeing revenue PMF, that's when we knew we had had something, but it took us four years plus 10 pivots to get there.

AI assessment note: “2019... when we started seeing revenue PMF, that's when we knew”

Q It's a much larger experience for a larger set of people, but do you think this can compete with that?

A So let me, let me just give you an example. So we have products for people ranging from 17 year olds to 2930 year olds. There is this examination people prepare for called Neat PG. If you became a doctor and you want to do your post-graduation and get your MD, et cetera, you give this NEAT PG examination. Now, the younger you are, you need more coaching, you need more intervention, you need somebody to call you and tell you, please study, you need more discipline. But NEAT PG, where let's say we own 24% market share, the problem there is people say, we don't need offline coaching centers. And even if you give them great content, but boring content, They will open the app because the intent is so high. They will study it without even building social interactions. So if your question is on whether this can be done, that you don't need, let's say, without a network, etc. Can you build that? That depends on how much intent.

AI assessment note: “Can you build that? That depends on how much intent.”

Q Oh, you met Bill Gates, right? Dude, how was that?

A So, I met him for dinner on Friday, and breakfast was Saturday, and breakfast was alone, and, ah, he sat. So, I always have questions. So, I had a bunch of questions for him. Some very interesting answers. The one thing, ah, There are many things, but one of the things that we were talking about is everybody has been talking about climate change for as long as we have. Uh, we all estimated world peak population at one point to be fifteen billion, and another point to be twelve billion. I think we are getting to that point where World population will quickly start to decline. So I was asking him, do you think with this trend, and these trends generally get exaggerated very quickly, do you think it makes sense to focus on mitigating climate change today as much as it did a few years ago? Because of the demographic change in the world, and, uh, He personally has, like, a bunch of tiers in which he puts in his money. Health, I think, is foremost for him. Then he has breakthrough energy. So then I was asking him the exact same question I'm asking you guys. I said, if you were to start over in life and you had a hundred million dollars, what energy would you personally invest in? Which energy company would you personally invest in? Would you go renewables? Would you go solar? Would you go wind? Would you go fission, fusion? Uh, so he said, out of the, 16 fission companies, nuclear. H…

AI assessment note: “the incredible thing about, um, him is his, eclectic, the eclectic nature of his knowledge.”