The Exchanges

Q Explain Brandeel. New guy has 300,000 followers on social media. Moves to Bombay. How much does a brand deal pay?

A Okay, so I, I'll tell you brand names and what paid me. The first brand deal was ever 70,000 rupees from Upgrad. That was upfront. They paid me, they were like, put up a story, tell our courses are there in digital marketing and content. They paid 70,000 rupees. That 70,000 gave me money to come to Bombay. Then while in 10 days I was living in a hotel, during those 10 days, I got a deal from KEI Wires, Pink Insurance and Amazon sellers. How I got this? I started DMing them on Instagram, and asked them that, hey, I can do this, this, this. Started telling them concepts of what I can do with them. Together, these three brands paid me around nine lakhs. That nine lakhs became my six-month runway in Bombay.

AI assessment note: “The first brand deal was ever 70,000 rupees from Upgrad.”

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 How can you not be good at business? Maki pizzi si Jajah.

A That was a learning. I saw my father growing. So I went from, I actually saw my father growing from in number, if, if you want to put it in lifestyle cycle, like from one BHK to a bungalow. Like I saw his first car, which was a third hand Sandro, it happened in front of me. His first Activa happened in front of me. So I think that helped me a lot. And because I was not, and I was in a school where everybody, you know, typical, like indoor tier two city where Two or three of your friends are like politicians, you know, like if this happens, like two or three friends are like someone, someone's son or someone's cha cha or kaka owns like a BMW. So you're always like jealous of them. So because I was like kind of inferior to people who had money, more power than me, uh, not being able to speak in English, not like academically good. So I was like, I want to prove myself. I want to go out. And that's why like, I used to just find out opportunities where I can do it. And the obvious choice was because my father is into it. Let me help him scale because the rest of us didn't know anything. In fact, before I tried, I applied in like, 60, 70 companies, FMCG companies for internship. Nobody replied. So nothing worked. So stood in Big Bazaar. I saw something very weird which I've thought was very insightful at that time. This is 2013, 14, I guess, 14 probably. So everybody was moving, thi…

AI assessment note: “That was a learning. I saw my father growing.”

Q Is that an important insight? If you're starting a fresh micro geography?

A So in distribution and like physical distribution, this worked well, because my whole colony started believing that, oh, this brand will be new because in the beginning in distribution, people. So here's what I believe, like, you know, there's a journey which a customer goes through. Conversation, convincing, and conversion. Okay. So first is a customer ask himself or herself. They converse with themselves that, Hey, is it happening everywhere? So that's a conversation going on. There's something. Then second is convincing. The convincing is you talk to your friends, you see someone else buying it, or maybe in distribution led India where the physical distribution happens. The shopkeeper is a key influencer to convince you. He's like, Bhabi ji, take it. And if the shopkeeper said it, Bhabi ji will take it. You will take it. The brother will take it.

AI assessment note: “So in distribution and like physical distribution, this worked well, because my whole colony”

Q Clean beauty. As if everybody's doing them, is there any value left in them? I think it should be done, but is it a sales point in the manner that people are selling it?

A So there are three phases of any beauty brand or FMCG. This I'm only learning from Korea because Korea has been absolutely ahead of it, right? So there were three phases. First 10 of those, beauty. Just like beauty products, they will come with a certain level of value. You buy it, function, and you go ahead. Second was performance. So performative beauty, how they call it, functional beauty, how they call it. They spot on say, this product will make your acne disappear. Functional, sort of problems. Very sort. And then third level comes with the clean beauty. Because, so I don't think in India performative beauty is being deployed so well. So clean beauty, this is my view. I think we're far from that.

AI assessment note: “clean beauty, this is my view. I think we're far from that.”