Ep #3| WTF is E-commerce: Kishore Biyani, Udaan & Meesho Founders Reveal What Sells and What Doesn’t

1. 0:00 – 1:18

   Intro

   1. NKNikhil Kamath0:00

      If you want to meet Vidit, so you have to go to an airport in a burger shop? [laughing]

   2. VAVidit Aatrey0:05

      [laughing] Two season in India, both harvesting. Post-harvesting, marriage starts because that's the resource for them.

   3. SPSpeaker0:12

      So people are just discovering something and say: "Hey, this looks cool, I want to buy this."

   4. NKNikhil Kamath0:16

      What are you saying in summary? Like, if I'm building a product for today, what is that insight?

   5. SPSpeaker0:21

      I have seen children of, uh, abandoned family doing phenomenally well and building new categories and new products.

   6. NKNikhil Kamath0:31

      The first thing we were talking about before you arrived is, are the products from your e-commerce company as late as you arrive? Like, [laughing]

   7. VAVidit Aatrey0:40

      [laughing]

   8. NKNikhil Kamath0:42

      ...

   9. VAVidit Aatrey0:42

      Mine is okay, but you are taking the company as well. This is not correct. [laughing]

   10. SPSpeaker0:46

       Uh.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath0:47

       We're kidding. You won't put this part in the podcast.

   12. SPSpeaker0:50

       Yeah. That's where he, he's saying that he's late because he was managing on time. [laughing]

   13. NKNikhil Kamath0:57

       So hi, guys. Welcome everyone to episode three. Uh, I think to begin, maybe we can all, like, speak about what we do in one minute. And, uh, since we all know each other already, uh, we can intersect, and we can say different things we know about each other. The idea is just to get everybody to know

2. 1:18 – 4:43

   Vidit Aatrey's story

   1. NKNikhil Kamath1:18

      who we are. So let's start with, uh, Vidit.

   2. VAVidit Aatrey1:22

      Hey, I'm Vidit Aatrey. I run Meesho. Meesho is-

   3. NKNikhil Kamath1:25

      Not like that, not what you give in college interviews and stuff like that.

   4. VAVidit Aatrey1:29

      What do you say then? We have-

   5. NKNikhil Kamath1:30

      Uh, I'm Vidit. I was born here. I was this kind of a child.

   6. VAVidit Aatrey1:38

      Ah, that's exactly what the college interview is. [laughing]

   7. NKNikhil Kamath1:40

      You know, at this age. [laughing]

   8. VAVidit Aatrey1:42

      [laughing]

   9. NKNikhil Kamath1:45

      ...

   10. VAVidit Aatrey1:46

       [laughing] Oh, अच्छा. So I have to give something different, right?

   11. SPSpeaker1:49

       Yeah, yeah.

   12. VAVidit Aatrey1:49

       Thoda hat ke.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath1:50

       Basically, you have to say the absolute blatant truth.

   14. VAVidit Aatrey1:54

       Ah, so-

   15. SPSpeaker1:54

       You're saying that anybody will find about your-- like, who you are, you run. Something which is not on-

   16. NKNikhil Kamath1:59

       Yeah.

   17. SPSpeaker2:00

       Yeah.

   18. VAVidit Aatrey2:00

       That's a good point. So I... Hey, I'm Vidit Aatrey. I grew up in Delhi, in that part of Delhi that people don't know as much, which is Rohini. I was born in Meerut, so my entire family comes from Meerut and Hapur, so I was the first engineer in my entire family, right? So it's a-

   19. NKNikhil Kamath2:18

       What was everyone else doing?

   20. VAVidit Aatrey2:19

       Farming. So my-- both my mom and dad's side, like, everyone, like, all my cousins, most of them still do farming. And so it was a very different upbringing. When I was growing up, my dad used to tell me there are only two kinds of professions, professions. One, someone who does a government job, or second, who sits on the parchoon ki dukaan. So if you don't want to sit in a parchoon ki dukaan, you better study and-

   21. NKNikhil Kamath2:38

       Parchoon ki dukaan kya hoti hai?

   22. VAVidit Aatrey2:39

       Which is a kirana shop, basically.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath2:41

       Kirana shop. Hmm.

   24. VAVidit Aatrey2:42

       So if you don't want to sit there, you better study and become an IAS officer someday. So all, all my life, I was, like, told this, and I used to believe it for a very long time. And, and I grew up, went to IIT Delhi, all of that. And when I went there, I realized the world is not bipolar, only two professions, and there are a lot more other things you can do, and that's when I changed. Um, after college, went to, um, went to ITC in a operations heavy role.

   25. NKNikhil Kamath3:11

       Hmm.

   26. VAVidit Aatrey3:12

       Very different, and from Delhi to Chennai. And I went into a factory where the-- where everyone in the factory used to speak only one language, which was Tamil. And I used to, I used to go every day in the office. There used to be a morning stand-up meeting, which was about an hour in Tamil. [laughing] And I'm standing there, and, like, everyone, everyone knows English. I'm saying: "Why don't we speak English?" "Because we are in Chennai, so we have to speak in Tamil." [laughing] So I used to stand there and have no idea what's happening, but I was forced to kind of pick up some bit. I, I would still say, like, the f- first two years of my career, it was very interesting because I was put into the most uncomfortable parts, right? Like, you sitting in Delhi, you can do all the nice stuff. Like, you can do good analysis, you understand Excel, but, like, managing a lot of people, going to a place where you're uncomfortable with everything: language, food. Over time, figuring out your way around this. But it was, it was pretty cool if I look back. At that point in time, got connected to a friend who was in Bangalore. Bangalore was coming up, like your Flipkarts and your InMobis of the world. So moved here, and eventually in twenty fifteen-

   27. NKNikhil Kamath4:24

       You were from the same college, no?

   28. VAVidit Aatrey4:24

       Yeah, yeah, same college, but, like, I think the-

   29. NKNikhil Kamath4:27

       Which year passed out?

   30. VAVidit Aatrey4:28

       Two... 2012.
3. 4:43 – 5:51

   What is Meesho?

   1. VAVidit Aatrey4:43

      bug because there was so much to do. Mm. We started Meesho back in 2015. Um, so now coming to, like, what we do at Meesho and why did we even pick what we are doing. So we started in 2015, and doing this because we realized that e-commerce was coming up and everyone was talking about, "Hey, why-- How all of this is moving online?" But e-commerce at that point in time was mostly smartphones and white goods selling online, right? Like, which was not India retail to some extent. Small businesses were a very core part of India retail, but still primarily offline, and eighty-five percent of India retail happens via a lot of these long-tail, unbranded small businesses. So we said: We'll bring them online. If someone asked me how, I had no idea, but we said we will bring them online, and that's when we started Meesho. So yeah, we will complete eight years. Been a very, very interesting journey. Um, now we have close to one forty million consumers who buy from us annually across all kinds of categories from about a million small businesses. So that's all.

   2. NKNikhil Kamath5:48

      Hmm, super. So,

4. 5:51 – 8:20

   Who is Kishore Biyani?

   1. NKNikhil Kamath5:51

      uh, I think Mr. Kishore Biyani, everybody knows, uh, broadly, you're an icon of selling both online and offline, and I think each one of us growing up in one way or another, has-... some way or in one way or another, experienced one product that you might have made or another. Uh, so maybe, uh, even though we have seen you, we don't know so much about your childhood, where you were born. Uh, I've met your family, I've come to your house, I've met your daughters and stuff like that, but, uh, maybe you can give us a minute or two.

   2. SPSpeaker6:28

      Yeah. So I'm Kishore Biyani. [clears throat] I formed a lot of consumer businesses, called our group the Future Group, and, [clears throat] I was born in Bombay. Born and brought up in Bombay. Uh, studied, uh, commerce. Was interested in marketing, so used to follow most of the advertising that used to happen then, and then build my own brand of trousers to start with. Started with fabric business.

   3. NKNikhil Kamath6:58

      How, how did you first think of [clears throat] starting a trouser brand?

   4. SPSpeaker7:01

      I think, uh, that was way back in-

   5. SKSujeet Kumar7:04

      Which year?

   6. SPSpeaker7:06

      I would say ninety-one or something. It... I was supplying garments to-- I was supplying fabric to the garment industry. That time the brands were Charagdin, Double Bull, they were very different brands then.

   7. NKNikhil Kamath7:19

      What year was this?

   8. SPSpeaker7:20

      This must be eighty-seven. And people were just moving into from tailor-made to ready-made.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath7:26

      Vidit was not even born.

   10. SKSujeet Kumar7:28

       Yeah. [laughing]

   11. SPSpeaker7:30

       [laughing] So I feel odd one out here in terms of seniority.

   12. NKNikhil Kamath7:34

       [laughing] He's, he's halfway there. [laughing] I'm little bit lower. He's upstairs.

   13. SPSpeaker7:41

       So it was a different world. I was born to a very conservative family. We come from Rajasthan. Family was very religious, pious. I was an atheist, uh, always, uh, what do you call? I was known as the black sheep of the family, and, uh, contrarian thoughts on everything in life. And so I thought I'll not join the family business. We had a small wholesale fabric trading business that time. So when I joined... When I, when I just graduated, I, I did some course in marketing. I did my, I did my CA entrance. I never-- I, I think in five years of college, I went to attend a class only once. One class

5. 8:20 – 16:15

   Rebellion, insecurity and success

   1. SPSpeaker8:20

      attended in five years.

   2. NKNikhil Kamath8:21

      Do you think there is some kind of a correlation between rebellious kids or kids who have grown up with more insecurity than usual, to how well they do later in life? Do you think more rebellious, insecure, end up doing better?

   3. SPSpeaker8:38

      I, I believe that, uh, today my children are b- born in, uh, abundance and to more democratic parents. I was not born to democratic parents, and we were born in a shortage era. So I think shortages or less availability does definitely makes you work harder and make you expand your mind and thoughts. So I think abundance can create something else, but what we got was not abundance in any which way. He also doesn't come from abundance in a way, no?

   4. SKSujeet Kumar9:08

      I ha- I don't, and by the way, to some extent, I agree with what you were just asking. I believe, like, I come from a family-- or I would say even when I was growing up, I was a very compliant child, right? So whatever my parents tell me, I do it. Until I come to college, and suddenly I have an independent mind of mine, and now I question everything. So until then, I would say, like, my parents would make me do that puja every day, and I'm an atheist since college. Right? So everything changed because until then, right, like, I only saw a very small part of the world, and I thought this is right and wrong, and everything is very black and white. And as you get exposed to more and more stuff, then some people are okay, and you can say rebellious, I call it independent, but I feel it happens, and it's definitely one input to doing something crazy, right? Because if you do something which is by the book, it's very hard for you to challenge what has been happening for years.

   5. SPSpeaker10:02

      Yeah.

   6. SKSujeet Kumar10:03

      But only one thing I, I, I observed as a common, like, he passed out in two thousand and twelve, and you are somewhere in eighty. But still, the, the feeling of like, I have grown in such a constrained, disciplined family... Because how I see, and that might be, that's not the truth, but, uh, children, so these day, we say that, no, they have a lot to-- a lot. Might be you have the same feeling, hey, two thousand and twelve kids have a lots of access of information, infrastructure, better college, better education, but the feeling is similar, and that doesn't matter. Like, our, our, uh, my grand- grandfather was always saying that, "When I was educa- uh, I was studying, I was crossing river, walking this much kilometer," and things like that. And when you were studying, he was saying that you guys have everything, and [chuckles] we believe, no, no, this is also tough. So I think that feeling is very common. Doesn't matter-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath11:00

      But do you think that is true then? Like, say, my parents, my mom was a music teacher, and my dad was a bank employee, but do you think people who grew up in middle-class upbringing, like myself or under, feel more insecure about things like money, uh, things like having the freedom that can be associated with money, and hence they overcompensate when they grow older?

   8. SKSujeet Kumar11:24

      I, I think money matters a bit lesser here. Like, I-- It's obviously when I was growing up, coming from a lower middle-class family, like, if it's a very top-of-mind thing to solve, but I don't think that leads to it. Like, very hard for me to attribute to it.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath11:42

      Right.

   10. SPSpeaker11:42

       I think if you go by data, it's very hard. Might be if I, we can share our perspective-

   11. NKNikhil Kamath11:46

       Right

   12. SPSpeaker11:46

       ... from the rebellious point of view, but-

   13. SKSujeet Kumar11:49

       Yeah

   14. SPSpeaker11:49

       -I think that's not true. I think it was very regimental in nature. When you're middle class, hey, you have to study, there is only one way, you have to get a, get into, like, some job, nice job, otherwise, your marriage will not happen, things like that. I think those are the main issue. Might be for us, it was never that issue, and that's why you can see.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath12:07

       But by data, I'll tell you, we all invest in startups, right? Like, each one of us.... uh, I didn't realize this for a long time, but very organically, you've at least we formed a filter. By we, I mean, different funds I'm a part of. That if somebody was a very entitled guy, if somebody was the son or a daughter of a very rich man, you would have this, uh, thing in your subconscious, which would make you wary of investing in that startup.

   16. SKSujeet Kumar12:36

       Same. I've had the same thing.

   17. SPSpeaker12:38

       Well, actually, it's not true in a way. I believe it's, uh, nature of a... But they can excel in something else which nobody else else can do. Some categories, they can excel much, much better. So I-- we have dwelt a lot into understanding this, but, uh, I think, uh, abundance creates something else and shortages create something else, but rebelliousness definitely creates something. Without being a rebel, uh, you can't-- because as a rebellion, uh, you like to destroy something and create something. No, I got into-- I created, uh, I went into business, created a fabric, which became quite popular. It was called stonewash at that time. Then denim as a fabric came in.

   18. NKNikhil Kamath13:14

       How did you create this fabric? Like-

   19. SPSpeaker13:16

       I think, uh, I think there was a fashion which was going along, and, uh, I was, uh, I did some course in weaving, and I was very interested in textile fabric as such. So all-

   20. NKNikhil Kamath13:26

       How old were you when you were doing this course?

   21. SPSpeaker13:28

       Twenty-one, twenty-two.

   22. NKNikhil Kamath13:29

       Uh, was it a thing back then to do a course in weaving and try to make a fabric?

   23. SPSpeaker13:33

       I was trying to do everything.

   24. NKNikhil Kamath13:34

       Uh.

   25. SPSpeaker13:35

       I, uh, I was not a great student or had inclination towards studies. Uh, my parents never knew whether I passed or failed also. So, so we were a, we were a joint family. We were thirteen of us in our age group. My father was six brothers, and if we all came and didn't-- one of them didn't sleep also, nobody would notice. So we lived very, very differently then. So I think, uh... so idea was to create something, and it started with creating that fabric, supplying to the garment industry, building denims, then building our own brand, and then it kept on going on and on. So in terms of creation, I- it became like building brands, building retail formats, then getting into NBFC, logistic business, insurance, so multiple things, and then investing into a lot of entrepreneurs.

   26. NKNikhil Kamath14:24

       Right. When was that moment when you really scaled? Like, when you guys became really big. Because I remember growing up, like, your brands were everywhere, and every one of us knew you. You were on the cover of magazines, like, you were talking about that book, na?

   27. SKSujeet Kumar14:39

       There was, like, one book that was kind of bible at that time, to, to study the retail.

   28. SPSpeaker14:43

       I think, uh, if you look at, uh, if I look back, because, uh, I'm in a different state of mind or in terms of business at the moment, so I've done... It might appear that I have done what people do in three generation. I created, and I destroyed everything. So creation and destruction, and maybe if there is a chance to create something more. But, uh, but it was a process which was fantastic-

   29. NKNikhil Kamath15:09

       Mm.

   30. SPSpeaker15:09

       - because first was destroying your old thoughts, destroying your parents' thoughts, creating something out of that, and then destroying your thoughts again and again. Because we went into luxury, and we went into masses. We went to the lowest end of the population with a store format called Aadhaar, which is below fifty thousand population, and we dealt with the highest end by creating something called Food Hall. And in terms of departmental store, Central to brand factory. So we catered to a lot of audiences, and there were a lot of learnings from, uh, like Hindustan Lever at that point of time. How do you create brands at every segment of the population? So I think branding was something which interested us and me.
6. 16:15 – 18:33

   How Kishore Biyani made it big

   1. NKNikhil Kamath16:15

      journey.

   2. SPSpeaker16:15

      Mm.

   3. SKSujeet Kumar16:15

      And out of all the things you could have done, like, why, like, Big, Big Bazaar and Future Group? Like, why-- How did you arrive at, "Okay, this is the thing, this is my calling?" Or was it just weaving thing which led to this?

   4. SPSpeaker16:27

      I, uh, before creating Big Bazaar, I had a format with in mind that, uh, we'll create a marketplace for brands. So Central was originally conceptualized much before Big Bazaar for me. But then Big Bazaar came about, uh... I, I started visiting, uh, the bazaars and the haats, which used to happen in small towns. So people used to take the markets. So we thought, "Why can't we create markets with that hustle and bustle in a city?" I had not seen Walmart then. I had not seen any other retail format. So we thought, "Let's try this." And, uh, so then the idea was to build scale. So we opened three stores in twenty-two days so that we could build some volumes and some scale. So it was a market, hustle bustle. We thought there should be a button brush effect. People should meet each other. People should- [clears throat] there should be crowd, because crowd can only get crowd. So it was a, it was a different experience then.

   5. SKSujeet Kumar17:20

      But we must say that, sir, uh, in this country, somebody who has thought of organizing retail and started at that scale, and people started believing because your, your format was started working. I think several format and come, destroyed, will come again, futuristic and all, but you have g-given that genesis org, uh, retail can be organized.

   6. NKNikhil Kamath17:40

      Like the kids say today, he's like the OG of commerce.

   7. SKSujeet Kumar17:43

      I call it father of-

   8. NKNikhil Kamath17:44

      Original gangster. [chuckles]

   9. SKSujeet Kumar17:45

      Father of, uh, organizing retail.

   10. SPSpeaker17:47

       I think-

   11. SKSujeet Kumar17:47

       Yeah, hundred percent.

   12. SPSpeaker17:49

       I think-

   13. SKSujeet Kumar17:50

       We have learned so much directly in that.

   14. SPSpeaker17:52

       ... You have, you have done that for retail, for sure.

   15. SKSujeet Kumar17:59

       We got that opportunity to do it, and I think once you start looking at from consumer lens, you can create something much, much more. Because you are looking at the consumer, then creates something, not looking at yourself and creating something.

   16. SPSpeaker18:12

       ... So we created that consumer understanding, trying to-- we, uh, as a group, we have an organization which is, uh, called Future Brands, wherein we from the last fifteen years, every six months we do a Bharat Darshan, and we record every societal change happening in the country.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath18:28

       That's very important.

   18. SPSpeaker18:28

       We record every lyrics written in the country. Anything which becomes popular, we make it a point.

7. 18:33 – 19:49

   Kishore Biyani's inspirations, Tirupati, Saravana Stores

   1. SPSpeaker18:33

      So like when we used to get huge crowds in, uh, Big Bazaar stores, we went to Tirupati temple to understand how to manage crowds. [laughing] So India is a fascinating country.

   2. NKNikhil Kamath18:44

      Like release this-

   3. SKSujeet Kumar18:44

      And what did you learn from Tirupati?

   4. SPSpeaker18:46

      Tirupati, unbelievable management. Crazy how to manage crowd or something. How do you create that, uh, [speaking Hindi] make people stand in the queue, give them water, give them everything, make them patient. And so you, you learn from everywhere, everywhere. India has all the experiences which you can experience and learn from.

   5. SKSujeet Kumar19:06

      Wow!

   6. NKNikhil Kamath19:07

      Incredible.

   7. SKSujeet Kumar19:09

      Learning Tirupati to retail, huh? [laughing] Should have been the title of the book.

   8. SPSpeaker19:13

      My first retail store experience, where we got inspired was Saravana Stores in Chennai.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath19:18

      Where they sell idli and all.

   10. SPSpeaker19:19

       Everything they used to sell in one single place.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath19:21

       Yeah.

   12. SKSujeet Kumar19:21

       Saravana Bhavan, right?

   13. SPSpeaker19:22

       Saravana Stores.

   14. SKSujeet Kumar19:24

       Stores, because stores big.

   15. SPSpeaker19:25

       They used to sell, uh, utensils the most. Uh, kapa-

   16. NKNikhil Kamath19:28

       Oh, I was thinking of Saravana Bhavan.

   17. SPSpeaker19:30

       Saravana Bhavan, that is a food, uh-

   18. SKSujeet Kumar19:32

       That's a food thing, but the store is huge.

   19. SPSpeaker19:34

       Huge.

   20. SKSujeet Kumar19:36

       Appliances, everything this-

   21. SPSpeaker19:37

       Yeah, everything. So Big Bazaar was in fact conceptualized from inspiration of Saravana more than anything else.

   22. NKNikhil Kamath19:44

       [speaking Hindi]

   23. SKSujeet Kumar19:46

       Yeah, like everybody here-

   24. NKNikhil Kamath19:47

       So I have to

8. 19:49 – 24:45

   Sujeet Kumar's Story

   1. NKNikhil Kamath19:49

      like preface this for context. Me and Sujeet hang out a lot. Okay, like we were together yesterday. We travel together. Uh, if he was not married, [laughing] people would have the wrong idea. But we end up spending... I think we travel at least once in two, three months, somewhere together.

   2. SKSujeet Kumar20:09

      Yes, I think last one year.

   3. NKNikhil Kamath20:11

      Yeah. Yeah.

   4. SKSujeet Kumar20:13

      Okay.

   5. NKNikhil Kamath20:13

      So I know him very well.

   6. SKSujeet Kumar20:15

      Yeah, but just-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath20:16

      Mm.

   8. SKSujeet Kumar20:16

      Uh, let, let me say, uh, where I come from.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath20:19

      Yeah.

   10. SKSujeet Kumar20:19

       Like Vidit was saying that I'm from Meerut. So I come from a place called Bhagal in Bihar. It's a very small, uh, town. I've grown up there, studied there till twelve in Hindi medium from Bihar Board. [chuckles] And I don't know how I have gone to IIT, because I came to know about IIT only in... People get the twelfth, we call it intermediate. Yeah.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath20:42

       Yeah.

   12. SKSujeet Kumar20:42

       So it was a part of college at the time. When after tenth you go to college and it's not ten plus two, it's an intermediate, then BA, BSc, whatever. So I have from Hindi medium converted to [chuckles] English just for exam. Uh, somehow landed in IIT Delhi. I never planned to go to IIT Delhi. I wanted to be in IT BHU because [speaking Hindi] and I will be the king of that campus. [laughing] Something happened, um, [speaking Hindi] I landed in Delhi. Uh, and that was my first big city, and I have exposed to like, okay, school or college [speaking Hindi] . Uh, tenth plus-- [speaking Hindi]

   13. NKNikhil Kamath21:39

       What was it? [laughing]

   14. SKSujeet Kumar21:41

       High school, [speaking Hindi] So Hindi is uch vidyalaya. Uh, so landed in I-IIT. [speaking Hindi] [laughing]

   15. SPSpeaker21:54

       Well, the same thing happened to me also. But well, I... So many things I never saw, even like I had a smaller school, I would say, until twelfth. When I came, [speaking Hindi] I have no idea, right? Like you have all kinds of sports, you have all kinds of-

   16. SKSujeet Kumar22:08

       Yeah

   17. SPSpeaker22:08

       ... extracurriculars to do. So you get exposed to this right after college or right after school.

   18. SKSujeet Kumar22:14

       Yeah.

   19. SPSpeaker22:14

       People go crazy. So I can totally connect with this feeling.

   20. SKSujeet Kumar22:17

       So India, my people play cricket, badminton, [speaking Hindi] [laughing] And you will not believe even billiards and all. I was spending so much of time, by second or third year, I was in the institute team. [laughing]

   21. NKNikhil Kamath22:35

       Huh?

   22. SKSujeet Kumar22:35

       So even I was playing billiard, pool. So like, like I said-

   23. NKNikhil Kamath22:38

       Still got good marks in IIT.

   24. SKSujeet Kumar22:40

       No, that was- [laughing]

   25. SPSpeaker22:42

       [laughing]

   26. SKSujeet Kumar22:43

       [speaking Hindi] But at that time, in, uh, Y2K, when we were passing in 2003 or 2001, 2002, the whole job scenario it was so bad. Campus, IIT, even computer science, [speaking Hindi] Otherwise, people go out, all the MNCs come to campus. They take those first, like electrical, computer, all these, and then rank wise, and even like- even you are last from the bottom, you, you will get some job. [speaking Hindi] And it was a kind of, [speaking Hindi] And then I had... Somewhere I thought, [speaking Hindi] And I remember, [speaking Hindi] IS karlo. Achha, IS karein kya? Lag raha hai ki it's a calling for IS. I wanted to be, become a UPSC. [speaking Hindi] Then you have to take some optional subject, like history, public ad, geography. You have to study all the general, uh, uh, uh, knowledge, and then you have to core subject like physics, math. As a science boy, you can choose one, otherwise you can choose any subject. [speaking Hindi] Then I spent almost six months there and then decided, [speaking Hindi] and this is not my interest.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath24:11

       Mm-hmm.

   28. SKSujeet Kumar24:12

       Somehow, um, I decided to join some small firm where I can learn....Some of the friends have connected me to, uh, some person. He has agreed to take me as a co-founder. At that time, KPO in two thousand, I'm talking about two thousand and four, two thousand and five. So we had started a KPO, taking a project, delivering the project. We were like twenty-five, twenty-six people, and doing that for almost like two, three years. And in two thousand and eight, recession came. [laughing] No project, no money.

9. 24:45 – 28:35

   The origins of FlipKart

   1. SKSujeet Kumar24:45

      [laughing] And Sachin, Sachin in two thousand and seven, uh, he was my one year junior in IIT, in same hostel. He said come to Bangalore, we are starting. I said, we have also started. [laughing] We have also started and I don't want to go to Bangalore. I was in love with that Delhi. That Delhi is not to be left, I was settled there. Um, so I said okay. Then he, he-- I think he got married early in two thousand and eight. So he called me for his marriage, and then, and we decided to close KPO because there was no project, no money. Then we decided to-

   2. NKNikhil Kamath25:22

      He's still your dentist, no?

   3. SKSujeet Kumar25:24

      Yes. So, uh, he said in two thousand and eight that come for a visit once, early two thousand. I said, "What are you doing?" He says, "Books selling." I said, "Good, Amazon type?" He said, "Yes." I said, "It sounds good. Let me come." [clears throat] Then I, I came in two thousand and eight. Um, I said, I will come, but I will see. I don't know, I was not able to imagine that... because he was-- always he was very silent boy, a little bit different on campus. I said, "What is he doing?" [laughing] So I said, "Look, there is no commitment, and I will meet the other person too, because Binny was two years junior to me. I said, "I will meet him too, after that we will see whether to do it or not." And I was like, "I want to stay in Delhi." So he said, "Come once, we will see." Because all the suppliers of books at that time were in Delhi, and they were not-- their presence in Delhi was not there. I said, "Let's go." And somehow, like, it has... I like the, uh, I like the business model, and then decided to again go-- went back to Delhi because I have to-- so I was taking care of all the business supply, operation. Then I went back to Delhi, solving those problem, meeting all the publishers, taking their suggestions, but you will not get a job. [chuckles] What are you doing here? Nothing like this happens. Books, no one will do online in India. Whatever. I think at that time, uh, we were inspired by your journey, and then we were-- that's where I'm saying that we were studying your books also. Binny says, "Let's read these books. There must be something in it on how to solve retail." [laughing] So at night, I said-- I told a publisher, "Give me that book, I have to read it today." [laughing] And then I, I, I finished that book.

   4. NKNikhil Kamath27:10

      And Flipkart started two thousand and eight?

   5. SKSujeet Kumar27:12

      Uh, so it started in October two thousand and seven. Uh, I joined in two thousand and eight, but I was like, both were there.

   6. NKNikhil Kamath27:19

      Uh. [laughing]

   7. SKSujeet Kumar27:19

      [laughing] And there was nothing else. I was there, uh, look, something when I went there, it was six, seven, seven, eight books order used to come.

   8. NKNikhil Kamath27:28

      Mm.

   9. SKSujeet Kumar27:29

      Some of them were of friends, [chuckles] three, four, and... So yeah, the, the journey has started. By the way, when I dese-- uh, joined, it was not even a company, it was a proprietorship, because at that time, payment gateway was not available for online. So Sachin f- father was a trader in, in, in, in, uh, uh, Punjab, Chandigarh. So he has some balance sheet where he will get that CC Avenue. That's why [laughing] it was a proprietorship. So, um, two thousand and nine, it was got registered, by the way. Flipkart got registered in two thousand and nine, but it started in two thousand-- October two thousand and seven. I came on board in two thousand and eight. So we started our journey. I, I, I taken care of all the supply chain, operation, category. Uh, first four year I was managing all these things, and then after that, mostly focusing on building supply chain capabilities, operation. So started, uh, Ekart within Flipkart in two thousand and ten. Uh, yeah, we have built that, and that, that journey was amazing. So from zero to fifteen... So I left

10. 28:35 – 31:24

    Udaan and Sujeet's investments

    1. SKSujeet Kumar28:35

       in two thousand and sixteen. I started Udaan, uh, with, uh, Baiphu and Amod. Again, Baiphu and Amod, uh, I met Baiphu, uh, in Flipkart. He was CTO of Flipkart. And Amod, uh, uh, Amod was CTO, and Baiphu, I know he was my senior in IIT Delhi, so we're good friend, but he was also working in Flipkart.

    2. NKNikhil Kamath28:55

       What's this IIT thing, why so many entrepreneurs come from there? I'm saying-

    3. SKSujeet Kumar28:59

       IIT Delhi produce, other IIT- [laughing]

    4. SKSujeet Kumar29:00

       By the way, all of them are same-

    5. NKNikhil Kamath29:02

       They also are.

    6. SKSujeet Kumar29:02

       All of them are same hostel also, Jwala, right?

    7. SKSujeet Kumar29:05

       Yes.

    8. SKSujeet Kumar29:05

       Baiphu Jwala, Sachin Jwala.

    9. SKSujeet Kumar29:07

       Sachin Jwala.

    10. SKSujeet Kumar29:08

        Uh-huh.

    11. SKSujeet Kumar29:08

        In Netflix. By the way, Zomato's founder is from Kara, but now you-- retail, retail, it seems that Jwala, all are from Jwala. [laughing]

    12. NKNikhil Kamath29:17

        But what does that hostel do?

    13. SKSujeet Kumar29:19

        I have no idea. Maybe now later, I'm connecting the dots now.

    14. NKNikhil Kamath29:22

        Is it because of the network of alumni that it helps IIT?

    15. SKSujeet Kumar29:27

        But IIT Delhi has that thing. Mumbai also has it-

    16. NKNikhil Kamath29:30

        But does alumni help? Like people who have-

    17. SKSujeet Kumar29:32

        Earlier they didn't use to, यार.

    18. SKSujeet Kumar29:33

        In our time, they have done it. But in my case, [overlapping chatter] like my, all of my angel was done by a lot of IIT Delhi.

    19. SKSujeet Kumar29:39

        It was not angel, in our time, there was no funding, nor anyone knew what it was.

    20. SKSujeet Kumar29:42

        Funding was what?

    21. SKSujeet Kumar29:43

        Uh.

    22. SKSujeet Kumar29:44

        Mm.

    23. SKSujeet Kumar29:44

        Funding and the VC fund were there, nobody was knowing at that time. So I think it was not there at that time. By the... that's why I'm saying in two thousand and twelve, I myself started doing angel. We got some exit [chuckles] by that time.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath29:55

        So Sujeet does a lot of angel, [laughing] like crazy. How many companies have you invested in?

    25. SKSujeet Kumar30:01

        Around hundred and fifty, hundred and fifty, yeah.

    26. NKNikhil Kamath30:03

        Hundred and fifty, how many have become big? Like serious scale.

    27. SKSujeet Kumar30:08

        Unacademy is that, uh, even this, uh, Grofers now it's Blinkit.

    28. SKSujeet Kumar30:13

        Mm.

    29. SKSujeet Kumar30:14

        Um, there are more scaled ones, five, six are there.

    30. NKNikhil Kamath30:18

        Of late, he keeps talking about coffee and- [chuckles]
11. 31:24 – 33:15

    Rameshwaram Cafe's incredible numbers

    1. SKSujeet Kumar31:24

       I have for the South Indian food because of, uh, if you'll see Rameshwaram, and I'll give you an example.

    2. SPSpeaker31:28

       Yeah, I've been there, yeah.

    3. SKSujeet Kumar31:29

       So they cut, like, seven thousand five hundred bills a day.

    4. SPSpeaker31:33

       Crazy!

    5. SKSujeet Kumar31:34

       And they-- one store does five crore. So this is like ten by ten, kind of ten by fifteen kind of store.

    6. SPSpeaker31:40

       Store in a whole.

    7. SKSujeet Kumar31:40

       Do, do like four point five crore a month.

    8. SPSpeaker31:44

       A month?

    9. SKSujeet Kumar31:45

       Uh, fifty crore, one store of ten by fifteen.

    10. NKNikhil Kamath31:48

        And with decent margins and all of that.

    11. SKSujeet Kumar31:50

        Decent margin. I, I'm just saying it's a seventy percent gross margin.

    12. NKNikhil Kamath31:53

        Mm.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar31:55

        They must be doing EBITDA on monthly level, generating around thirty percent-

    14. SPSpeaker31:59

        Mm.

    15. SKSujeet Kumar32:00

        -minimum.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath32:00

        Mm. So Vidit's wife is, uh, again, a very successful entrepreneur. She has this brand of clothing called, uh, My Bliss Club.

    17. SKSujeet Kumar32:11

        Bliss Club, yeah.

    18. NKNikhil Kamath32:13

        You want to talk about it? You want to say something?

    19. SKSujeet Kumar32:14

        Yeah. So, so basically, she started this business about two and a half, three years ago, and, like, it's a very mission-driven business.

    20. NKNikhil Kamath32:21

        Mm.

    21. SKSujeet Kumar32:21

        What she's trying to solve is, she's fundamentally building the first women-focused fitness brand, right? Because in India, most fitness brands have always been associated with men, right?

    22. NKNikhil Kamath32:31

        Mm.

    23. SKSujeet Kumar32:31

        Like, no one solved women-focused problems. So she started this two and a half, three years ago, and she wants to kind of build a culture of movement, in her own words, right? So she wants people to move a lot more. Fitness is not just about having, like, some crazy six-pack abs, but like everyone, whatever you do, every single day, even if you walk hundred meters, you're moving, and how can you make that journey more fulfilling? So she started this two and a half, three years ago, and it's been doing pretty well.

    24. SPSpeaker32:57

        I, I see her every day because we live in gym.

    25. SKSujeet Kumar32:59

        True, true.

    26. SPSpeaker33:00

        Religiously, they, they like, she comes every day.

    27. NKNikhil Kamath33:03

        Yeah?

    28. SPSpeaker33:04

        [chuckles] Yeah.

    29. NKNikhil Kamath33:04

        In gym?

    30. SPSpeaker33:05

        Ah.
12. 33:15 – 35:51

    Kishore Biyani's most profitable business

    1. SKSujeet Kumar33:15

       a lot in India?

    2. SPSpeaker33:15

       So we have-- we had a brand- we built a brand called All, Little Larger.

    3. SKSujeet Kumar33:19

       Uh.

    4. SPSpeaker33:20

       That became very big. Actually, it was the most profitable business we ever created. And but majorly, we were in women's, not in men's as much.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath33:31

       So before I met Meenu, like one and a half, two years ago, me and Vidit had gone for a conference. So I had never met his wife, and, uh, "" we had one week to kill, and we used to spend a lot of time having breakfast, lunch, dinner every day. And he would describe Meenu to me... Uh, the thing about Vidit, right? He's very certain about what he wants in life, and there is a weird kind of contentment. I'm talking not professionally, but personally, which makes him, I think, more complete as an emotional human being, which is fairly unique. 'Cause many people I know, including myself, we live through a lot more ambiguity when it comes to forming our notions about these subjects, where you're so certain about what you believe in and what you want.

    6. SPSpeaker34:25

       And so early in life, I think that's, uh, something gifted.

    7. NKNikhil Kamath34:28

       And you're the youngest amongst all of us. Or, uh, Sujeet , like-

    8. SKSujeet Kumar34:35

       Very good, good for a podcast like this, yeah.

    9. NKNikhil Kamath34:38

       Uh, anything to anyone. [laughing] Like, I'm thinking where we both don't get into trouble. It's not that he will get into trouble-

    10. SPSpeaker34:45

        But I want, like, masala story, you know. Like, we don't want a safe story, we want an interesting story.

    11. NKNikhil Kamath34:50

        Mm. I- we'll talk about a friend of ours, okay, first.

    12. SKSujeet Kumar34:53

        Uh.

    13. NKNikhil Kamath34:53

        So , like, last month?

    14. SPSpeaker34:58

        Uh, February, yeah.

    15. NKNikhil Kamath34:59

        February, we went to Riyadh. We were there for one entire week, and one very nice gentleman invited us to his house for dinner and, uh, his family. His name was H-A-

    16. SPSpeaker35:12

        Hani Mohammed.

    17. NKNikhil Kamath35:13

        Hani Mohammed, H-A-N-I. Uh, you say the next part. [chuckles] You tell him.

    18. SPSpeaker35:22

        That, so again, Marwari or, uh, Mumbai, so accent Hindi. So then, uh, Hani Mohammed, everybody's know Hani. He started calling him Honey. [laughing] Honey.

    19. SKSujeet Kumar35:35

        That friend of yours. [chuckles]

    20. SPSpeaker35:37

        And, uh, but it was so funny when he, when they're like, um: "Hi, Honey." [laughing] "Hi, Honey. Good night, Honey." I was like, "His name is Hani."

    21. SKSujeet Kumar35:49

        [laughing]

13. 35:51 – 39:35

    The changing ecosystem of Saudi Arabia

    1. NKNikhil Kamath35:51

       [laughing] But Riyadh was such a fun experience, so-

    2. SPSpeaker35:54

       It was very good.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath35:55

       ... Hani Mohammed.

    4. SKSujeet Kumar35:55

       Yeah, forty-five thousand. In one project.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath36:23

       In, in one project. They're spending three trillion dollars on that NEOM.

    6. SPSpeaker36:28

       ... uh, that I saw, like some city, very different city.

    7. SPSpeaker36:31

       It's a, it's a line city, call it line. So the dimension is, uh, two hundred meter, uh, by hundred and fifty meter.

    8. SPSpeaker36:39

       Mira ek prashna hai bhaiya. Aap sab itni scale mein dekhte hai sab kuch cheezein. You all see, visit abroad. La- we all have done it, and then we want to do something [chuckles] like India. So that itself, sometimes it's... Is it a, a great thing or a-

    9. NKNikhil Kamath36:54

       I think, I think the dynamics and the demographics of the two country are-- countries are so different.

    10. SPSpeaker37:00

        Mm.

    11. NKNikhil Kamath37:00

        I think Saudi Arabia probably has less than ten percent of our population.

    12. SPSpeaker37:05

        Not even ten, thirty-six million.

    13. NKNikhil Kamath37:06

        Uh, five per- like three percent.

    14. SPSpeaker37:08

        Yeah.

    15. SPSpeaker37:09

        Yeah. Less than three percent, two percent. It's crazy.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath37:12

        Kinda like plan, like big.

    17. SPSpeaker37:13

        You can't plan, but I'm saying the imagination goes wild, na?

    18. NKNikhil Kamath37:16

        Correct. I think for that point to arrive, we need to have kinda like reached a certain GDP per capita, I think.

    19. SPSpeaker37:23

        Yeah, but, uh, you know, when, like, when we started going abroad and sab stores visit karna chalu kiya, sabse milna chalu kiya, we would have met every entrepreneur who has created something in the world. Woh scale dekh ke, I think we start thinking about that, yeh karenge India mein, and then we start making mistakes. I was coming to that point.

    20. NKNikhil Kamath37:46

        I agree with you. I think what-

    21. SPSpeaker37:47

        Have you seen a lot of examples like this, like where people get inspired too much and say, "Haan, yeh US mein chalta hai, India mein bhi chalayenge?"

    22. SPSpeaker37:53

        India mein yeh problem hai. Sab model wahi se aate hai.

    23. NKNikhil Kamath37:56

        But don't you think jo US mein hota hai, yahan pe lag ke saath hota hai, but hota hai? Maybe with a fifteen-year lag.

    24. SPSpeaker38:03

        Kuch nahi, kuch toh hota hi hai, but because human beings are human beings.

    25. NKNikhil Kamath38:06

        Like, I'm talking about e-commerce at large. I'm talking about-

    26. SPSpeaker38:09

        But e-commerce also in India, since the subject is, uh, getting discussed, India mein itna lag hata kuch nayi changes bhi aa jate uss dvara.

    27. NKNikhil Kamath38:18

        Correct. Agree.

    28. SPSpeaker38:18

        Haan, but Meesho type thodi na hai kuch yeh.

    29. NKNikhil Kamath38:20

        Yeah, but we admit-

    30. SPSpeaker38:22

        Localization has to happen, I agree.
14. 39:35 – 41:50

    The brands that scaled in India

    1. NKNikhil Kamath39:35

       Agar main aapse yeh puchoon ki consumer f- consumer-facing brands in India which have scaled, let's say to about thousand crores in sales, what are the first five brands that come into your mind, and why do you think there are fe- so few brands?

    2. SPSpeaker39:50

       I think brands ban rahe hai. Pehle, pehle toh hajar crore ke brand hote hi nahi the, ab toh, ab toh dikhne lag gaye hai. Toh-

    3. NKNikhil Kamath39:55

       Kaunse aate hai aapke dimag mein pehle?

    4. SPSpeaker39:56

       Like we were able to build around four, five thousand crore brands. So but now you look at Boat, jaise aap personal wear mein dekhenge, um, I, I am looking at, uh, beauty mein bhi kuch brands aa gaye hai, jo scale ho rahe hai.

    5. SPSpeaker40:11

       Yeah.

    6. SPSpeaker40:12

       Even Mamaearth has scaled-

    7. SPSpeaker40:13

       Mamaearth

    8. SPSpeaker40:13

       ... to a certain level, but not thousand crore, but they are all getting there. So new age brands are happening, but old age brands toh, I think levers, Nestle, they all-- they have all built brands here. Look at the brand Maggi has built na?

    9. SPSpeaker40:24

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    10. SPSpeaker40:25

        It's crazy. One single category, one single product is-

    11. SPSpeaker40:28

        But they are all-

    12. SPSpeaker40:28

        will be a billion dollar brand.

    13. NKNikhil Kamath40:30

        The ones which have really scaled have been the foreign brands which have come into India.

    14. SPSpeaker40:33

        That's why India maybe... But in them, I think Marico has done well. ITC, I would rate it as an Indian company. They are building up a lot of brands.

    15. SPSpeaker40:41

        Good brand.

    16. SPSpeaker40:42

        Toh Britannia, in a way, kafi Indian brands bana rahe hai. Toh India mein po-

    17. SPSpeaker40:47

        Parle hai.

    18. SPSpeaker40:48

        Bahut hai. Parle hai na, unbelievable brand hai na? Mm.

    19. NKNikhil Kamath40:51

        So I think for this con-

    20. SPSpeaker40:53

        Amul, Amul, I think, is the biggest brand India has created ever. [chuckles]

    21. NKNikhil Kamath40:55

        Yeah. I think for this conversation, let's not focus or fixate upon e-commerce alone, but commerce at large, because we have the-

    22. SPSpeaker41:03

        But digital commerce is a very interesting subject.

    23. NKNikhil Kamath41:05

        Ha.

    24. SPSpeaker41:06

        And ultimately, uh, digital... To buy anything, it will be a digital use in whether it will influence you, whether you have seen the brand digitally. So digital is a part of your life now.

    25. SPSpeaker41:15

        That's true.

    26. SPSpeaker41:15

        Uske bina commerce ho hi nahi sakta hai.

    27. NKNikhil Kamath41:16

        You think that's the future-

    28. SPSpeaker41:18

        That's so true

    29. NKNikhil Kamath41:18

        ... and physical is going to die?

    30. SPSpeaker41:19

        It's not about physical or digital.
15. 41:50 – 43:07

    Selling online vs. offline

    1. SPSpeaker41:50

       building, my daughters are doing. I'm maybe a mentor. They are... Because I don't belong to that generation who think digitally. The last thing digitally we did was to build, uh, a whole, uh, thing around data. Uske baad mein, we did Big Bazaar two-hour delivery, which, which became very successful. We got a break. We, we started Future Bazaar when, futurebazaar.com and Flipkart had along the same time.

    2. SPSpeaker42:13

       Yeah, yeah.

    3. SPSpeaker42:13

       So-

    4. SPSpeaker42:13

       I, I think they're a little bit delayed, but yeah, around 2000-

    5. SPSpeaker42:16

       Around the same time, [crosstalk] 2008, '9, yeah.

    6. SPSpeaker42:18

       Yeah.

    7. SPSpeaker42:19

       So we attempted digital. Being physical, attempting digital was the biggest mistake, because you can't think dig- digital pe- Who are born digital, think digital. So we were born physical and thinking digital was adding one more layer, but that doesn't work.

    8. NKNikhil Kamath42:32

       And what do you think the recipe is now? What could work?

    9. SPSpeaker42:34

       You have to think digital now.

    10. NKNikhil Kamath42:36

        ... but also have a physical presence?

    11. SKSujeet Kumar42:38

        Physical, you sell through every medium, but you have to think digital. Everything-- When we used to build brands earlier, it was newspaper advertising, television advertising, [speaking Hindi] . Now you can't build a brand on newspaper advertising or television advertising or outdoor. [speaking Hindi]

    12. VAVidit Aatrey42:56

        Yeah, digital marketing, uh, targeting digital.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar43:00

        So you have to think digital. The consumers are different, cohorts [speaking Hindi] , source [speaking Hindi] .

    14. NKNikhil Kamath43:05

        So even before we talk about e-commerce

16. 43:07 – 48:35

    Do we have any agency over how we shop?

    1. NKNikhil Kamath43:07

       or digital-

    2. SKSujeet Kumar43:07

       Mm.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath43:08

       -buying something, why do you think, from a very psychological standpoint, why do you think somebody buys a product? What in their psyche instigates them to buy a certain product? Why do some products do better than other products? And do you think-- See, I'm not talking about the essentials that we all need, but I'm talking about shopping, shopping in the sense of the word that we know it today. Do you think the power dynamic in a way shifts from the seller of the product to the bu- from the, uh, seller-- from the buyer to the seller each time somebody buys a product? Like, why does somebody buy a product and why does a product work?

    4. VAVidit Aatrey43:50

       So I'll tell you, like, at least what we see now, right? Like now, because of social, there's massive FOMO in the world, right? So there's... people call it inspiration, but a lot of this is FOMO, right? Like, no one wants to be left out. We see lots and lots of shoppy gets-- shopping gets inspired by social media, right? Like by Instagram, by this and that. One of the very common products that people use on the Meesho app is people take photograph, and they search that same photograph and buy. And most of those photographs come from Instagram.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath44:21

       So how big is social media as a influencer part of Meesho's overall sales?

    6. VAVidit Aatrey44:27

       I would say it's very hard to attribute, because in many cases people come in-

    7. NKNikhil Kamath44:30

       Direct, indirect?

    8. VAVidit Aatrey44:31

       Well, it's a lot, by the way. Even the way we design, what kind of trends are coming up, what kind of things you see, everything is driven a lot by what data we see on social. It's a big part. Something direct attribution we can see when people are really searching that image, and it's an Instagram image, so that we know, and that's a large part. But even otherwise, we see everyone deciding what to buy and what not to buy, driven a lot from social media.

    9. NKNikhil Kamath44:53

       So you're saying there is this one central body in a way, of influential people, who decides what is cool, and then everybody decides they need that product in their life?

    10. VAVidit Aatrey45:03

        To some extent, yes. Right, like, that's happening. Now, people are seeing a lot of celebrities. Now they are also seeing these influencers come up.

    11. NKNikhil Kamath45:10

        And how, how-

    12. VAVidit Aatrey45:11

        Right?

    13. NKNikhil Kamath45:11

        ... high does that chain go? Let's say we look at an influencer.

    14. VAVidit Aatrey45:14

        Yeah.

    15. NKNikhil Kamath45:14

        Who does the influencer look at? Who in turn d- does that person look at? Is it a corporation which is setting trends that are cool, or is it organically evolving from people?

    16. VAVidit Aatrey45:26

        So at least from what we see now, it's-- it may have started with being very concentrated, but now even, like, I see, like, Blissclub starting, right? Like, they leverage influencers quite a lot. Uh, that entire brand was, by the way, built on Instagram. Like, everything was built on Instagram. And they found people, so now they're influencers that people can relate with: "Hey, this influencer looks like me, wears the kind of things I like, and I follow that person." And some of the influencers are very original kind of products they choose and they recommend and so on. So it's not, like, very concentrated that, "Hey, this person looks like this, and that person looks like this." I feel now it's very decentralized to some extent, and everyone knows what kind of person feels like a body double to me, right? Like, "Hey, this person has the same beliefs, same liking, same kind of body, and I like this person. I want to buy what they good look in." So I feel that's happening.

    17. NKNikhil Kamath46:14

        At the very core of this distinction, you're saying people are mandating or people are governing what becomes cool, and it's not the brands or corporation?

    18. VAVidit Aatrey46:24

        Correct.

    19. NKNikhil Kamath46:25

        People are leading and brands are following?

    20. VAVidit Aatrey46:26

        To some extent, now I see this to be very strong, and I feel this is only getting bigger and bigger.

    21. SKSujeet Kumar46:32

        And I believe there is a reason for it. We'll see, like he was saying, the social media, especially these, uh, video platforms, let's say you can say TikTok, Choose, whatever, like Instagram, uh, Facebook, there are so many distribution, big platform, where more than hundreds of millions of users. A Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, or in me, [speaking Hindi] And they, they like those video. It's very hard for us to relate to why these guys are watching so much. And ultimately, some style, some product, something they pick, and they wanted to lo- look like it because they spend so much of time. So I think, like he was saying, that social, I think it is becoming a mainstream. L- I, I was just telling you, when we are solving this predictability, hey, the goods were going to be delivered within, uh, one day, two days, or in one week, depend on the location and all. I think this generation, for them, it's given. That they are not thinking about, "Hey, hey, how..." I was talking about a payment gateway integration. [speaking Hindi] Uh, I think people now, uh, wanted to look good, wanted to look different. If you are asking: Who are the influencer? If in their society, they know some guys who have, like, thousand, uh, uh, people follower, ten thousand follower, and they are getting inspired, "Yeah, I can become a influencer." They are endorsing the brand, local brand, chips, some shops, something, and they are innovative i- because they, they wanted to look different in every video, because they are creating reels also. So what they do? Go to mall, go to changing room, just change and take one video, because they cannot spend that much of money. See, I think now they endorse in a different way.

    22. NKNikhil Kamath48:31

        So is that the future, instead of marketing on newspaper, TV?

    23. SKSujeet Kumar48:34

        I, I think the way,

17. 48:35 – 58:42

    Influencer Marketing in E-commerce

    1. SKSujeet Kumar48:35

       uh, we look at it, because being a part of the old economy, the... We believe that [clears throat] whenever a dominant media or communication method changes, everything changes around it.... So when, when there was a newspaper, then the radio, then the television. Television commoditized build brands. Now that's, uh, social media and social interaction. And I think mobile phone, uh, makes you very individualistic, because now at, at, anyway, every home, everybody has a different breakfast, everybody has a different meal. Earlier, the family used to sit together and had one kind of meal. Things have changed, and we have become very individualistic because of everybody has a personal phone. So things are changing around it. You-- So every person has a personal preferences of influencer. You need, you need so many people now to get influenced, meaning, somebody will get influenced by something, somebody will get inf-influenced by something. Earlier, it was mass advertising. I remember we, we made a movie, and there was a particular dress which was made by Biba, and they still sell that dress after fourteen years or fifteen years. And that-- virtually, that dress made Biba as a brand also to a great extent. So earlier there were other influences, but it was, it was commoditized to a great, great extent. But today, things are different. It's getting individualistic more, and then you have to find that kind of users together and make them into a group here.

    2. NKNikhil Kamath49:54

       So for the future of building a product, for the new consumer brands that are coming up today, is the go-to strategy just that, paying influencers to promote your product?

    3. VAVidit Aatrey50:04

       No, no, I think it's a... For brands, I think now it's a very core part. Like, if you don't align with the influencer-

    4. NKNikhil Kamath50:12

       Like, say, brands also have a message. Like, I could be saying: my brand is sustainable, my brand is XYZ-

    5. VAVidit Aatrey50:18

       Yeah.

    6. NKNikhil Kamath50:18

       -my brand does a certain kind of fashion. Does the brand try to build their distinction through that brand message? Or is the lower-hanging fruit going to the influencers who have the widest reach and paying them money to adopt the brand in a way?

    7. VAVidit Aatrey50:36

       It's happening a lot. And by the way, it's just not about finding the biggest influencer. As I was saying, now influencers stand for different things.

    8. NKNikhil Kamath50:43

       Yeah.

    9. VAVidit Aatrey50:43

       So you have to find someone who is very close to the philosophy that the brand wants to build. By the-

    10. NKNikhil Kamath50:48

        So influencer is a intermediary between a brand and the customer?

    11. VAVidit Aatrey50:51

        Yeah, yeah. By the way, people have become very conscious. They look at everything. "Hey, who have you picked? What does this person believe in? You say sustainable, I see this person using a plastic water bottle. I don't believe this person's sustainable." My point is, like, everything, every detail somehow matters now-

    12. NKNikhil Kamath51:05

        Right

    13. VAVidit Aatrey51:05

        ... because people spend so much time.

    14. NKNikhil Kamath51:07

        Yeah.

    15. VAVidit Aatrey51:08

        So it's just not-- You can't go... And that's why influencers work, and very, very small influencers are very effective, because it's just not go to the celebrity with millions of followers. You have to find someone who connects with the principles of the brand.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath51:22

        Yeah.

    17. SKSujeet Kumar51:22

        If you see, I think it just comes back. Earlier, like you said, the uni-dimensional controlled channel, even like newspaper, TV, and it was controlled. Because of this social media, uh, uh, revolution, multiple access-

    18. VAVidit Aatrey51:35

        Yeah

    19. SKSujeet Kumar51:35

        ... uh, uh, innovations are happening, multiple access. It's very hard to pick one trend. Some trends are working, let's say, Tier one, some Tier two, some like high, high-paying capacity, some Gen Zs, some, uh, uh, uh, Millennials. And mo- and it's very hard to pick trends. But if you'll see, the n- the platform which are responsible for this social media, let's say Instagram or Facebook, or... Now they are creating a fund. So to engage these influencers, because if the commercially they will not-- commercially, if they will not be engaged, it's very hard for them to come again and innovate. So now they're creating a fund for it, and somehow they are creating economics. Currently, those are broken, uh, because the people who are finding those numbers of influencers, they are creating good infrastructure, but currently it's broken. So these are big innovations are happening, how to create that fund so that all these influencers at multiple access keep engaged with the platform. So I think-- And I see retail as becoming a by-product of that.

    20. NKNikhil Kamath52:41

        And do you think celebrities, like I'm talking about old-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 are 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?

    21. VAVidit Aatrey53:12

        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?

    22. NKNikhil Kamath53:24

        Right.

    23. VAVidit Aatrey53:24

        And until you become large enough to afford a celebrity, you can't do it.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath53:27

        Right.

    25. VAVidit Aatrey53:28

        Now, people can start on day one.

    26. NKNikhil Kamath53:29

        Yeah.

    27. VAVidit Aatrey53:29

        You could be a very small one, you find a small influencer who connects with your philosophy.

    28. NKNikhil Kamath53:32

        Right.

    29. VAVidit Aatrey53:32

        And people keep graduating. There are 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, uh, some large influencers with same following as celebrities.

    30. NKNikhil Kamath53:48

        You guys do a lot of marketing?
18. 58:42 – 1:05:31

    Past, present and future of selling in India, The Temple Economy

    1. SPSpeaker58:42

       mean, it, uh, lot-- whatever, thirty, thirty-five years we have worked, there is a lot of things which you learn during the journey. And journey is, uh, a lot of people believe India is infinite market because of our twenty percent of the world's population. And I think that's... India is a very, very interesting country, the most heterogeneous country you can ever believe in. I'll give you an interesting example of a temple or a religious economy. India mein small shrines se leke bade se leke pachas lakh temple honge.

    2. SKSujeet Kumar59:13

       Aaram se. Kam bhi bol rahe hai.

    3. SPSpeaker59:14

       Pachas lakh.

    4. SKSujeet Kumar59:15

       Haan.

    5. SPSpeaker59:15

       Das logon ko feed karta hai har temple. Panch crore logon ko kaam karne ki jarurat hi nahi hai. Temple economy. Toh har India mein aisi microeconomies bahot hai, jinko kaam karne ki jarurat hi nahi hai. And I believe twenty percent of India or thirty percent of India, in some sense, lives on government aid. Toh when you look at the entire market, aap ek, ek cheez katte jayenge toh aapko dikhega market itna hi hai. And but unfortunately, the reports which the consulting companies make, I was just-- I was reading all the data, ke e-commerce mein now abhi athrah crore log use kar rahe hai, satavan crore use karne lag jayenge chhabbis tak, aur uske baad itne log use karne lag jayenge, market itna ho jayega. I think ye kabhi hota hi nahi hai. And to make that happen, it can't happen with commodity play, or it can't happen with, uh, where the value addition is not there. So, uh, my theory, which we-- I wrote it also a long time back in my book, is anybody... I call that India is divided into three parts, three India. Consumption ke hisab se, India one, India two, India three. India one is the consuming class. Anybody who has a domestic help, is for me, is a consuming class. Because consuming matlab, not basic consumption, but some value-added consumption. India two is the serving class, which makes our lives better. The driver, the helpers, the peon, the watchman, the lift man. And for every one India one, there is three to three and a half India two. And unfortunately, India one doesn't give en-enough money to India two to make them consume discretionary products.

    6. NKNikhil Kamath1:00:48

       ...And then there is India three, which is farm laborers. They live on aids and factory workers.

    7. SPSpeaker1:00:55

       And that's not-

    8. NKNikhil Kamath1:01:02

       And kitna bada India one, India two and three?

    9. SPSpeaker1:01:04

       I would say, like in a city like Bombay, uh, it's a very interesting definition. Until some years ago, twenty-five percent of people used to live in apartments. I would say ten years ago. Today, it might be thirty-five. Five to eight percent people lives in- lived in chawls, and balance lived in slums. So, so India, I think every city will represent some way or the other.

    10. NKNikhil Kamath1:01:31

        But if you had to aggregate the country, what do you think about?

    11. SPSpeaker1:01:33

        I would say eleven to thirteen percent would be the consuming class.

    12. NKNikhil Kamath1:01:36

        India one.

    13. SPSpeaker1:01:37

        India one.

    14. SKSujeet Kumar1:01:38

        Which is twenty crore.

    15. SPSpeaker1:01:39

        Which is around twenty crores. [clears throat] And it might be growing, and I think it's growing. And what pace of growth will depend, uh, will de- will determine everything. And unfortunately, we live in that community only, that India one. [laughing]

    16. SKSujeet Kumar1:02:00

        I wanted to see India.

    17. SPSpeaker1:02:14

        So India , jo dikhana chahte ho dikh jaye. India mein sab kuch hai dikhane ke liye.

    18. SKSujeet Kumar1:02:17

        Jo dikhana hai, dikha do.

    19. SPSpeaker1:02:18

        Jo dikhana hai, dikha do. And, oh, that's why I always say that there was a movie which became very popular during our time. There was a movie called Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, and there was a song called Hum Honge Kamyab Ek Din. [music] So aaj bhi woh gaana chalta hum honge kamyab ek din. India, we want to succeed, but I think India is twenty percent of the world, eighteen to twenty percent of the world's population. It... For the whole world, I think it was the European economy, the American economy, which consumed, which made the world grow, then the Chinese economy, which made the world grow. Now, it's India's time. India will have to learn to consume much, much more than what they are consuming, and that's what will drive, uh, economic growth. Yeah.

    20. SKSujeet Kumar1:02:57

        Some of the numbers, if you'll see, sir, I'm, I'm just... I'm, I'm not contesting ki A, B, and they're a bucket, and I, uh, the places, uh, we have come from, I totally agree. But some of the number, if you'll see, if it's true, I think it's m- mind-boggling. Let's say India GDP, when I was passing out in 2003, was around five hundred billion dollar, right? Bis saal ho gaye, and now it's... uh, I'm just saying what the number published is around, let's say, I'm taking three point five trillion, seven times has increased in twenty years. Let's say, farm GDP, which is seventeen, eighteen percent, I think that's the number, sixteen percent, eighteen percent, which comes around five hundred and fifty, six hundred billion at this level. But that farm income only happening in Tier 2 beyond, because uska paanch percent bhi Tier 1, Tier 2 city mein nahi ja raha. Woh ya toh gaon mein ja raha hai, ya toh chhote shahar mein ja raha hai, eighty percent of it. And but those numbers, even because no tax and all, PP, PP, I think it's around, if you'll see, eight hundred, nine hundred billion dollar kind of impact it can create. So that's huge number.

    21. SPSpeaker1:04:13

        Value addition kya hai?

    22. SKSujeet Kumar1:04:15

        Value addition. Value addition nahi lekin kanja- woh paisa ja toh raha hai na-

    23. SPSpeaker1:04:18

        Value addition nahi hai na economy mein. Kitne logon ke beech mein hai woh.

    24. SKSujeet Kumar1:04:24

        But pehle toh woh, woh bhi nahi ja raha tha na.

    25. SPSpeaker1:04:26

        Ab theek hai, ab jodte jaiye, but ultimately, you need X amount... uh, the best consumption happens when the economy is around seven thousand to eleven thousand dollar per-

    26. SKSujeet Kumar1:04:35

        Yeah, ear- earlier it was four thousand, now people say that five thousand, six thousand.

    27. SPSpeaker1:04:39

        I would say-

    28. SKSujeet Kumar1:04:40

        Per capita, capita.

    29. SPSpeaker1:04:41

        Per capita. Toh-

    30. NKNikhil Kamath1:04:42

        Do you think that's the main metric that matters, per capita GDP?
19. 1:05:31 – 1:07:46

    India's wedding economy

    1. SKSujeet Kumar1:05:31

       Uh, there's another, uh, thing, uh, another statistic which I want to... India has, uh, two crore weddings a year. Matlab one crore weddings, two crore families. We produce two and a half crore, uh, children every year. So, and our wedding economy is fifteen lakh crores. A average spend of seven lakh rupees in a family, multiplied by two crore-

    2. SPSpeaker1:05:49

       Yeah

    3. SKSujeet Kumar1:05:50

       ... families is chaudah lakh crore.

    4. SPSpeaker1:05:51

       Chaudah lakh.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:05:51

       Why do you think ki yahan pe koi aggregation nahi hua hai in the wedding industry?

    6. SPSpeaker1:05:55

       Bohot aggregation hua hua hai.

    7. NKNikhil Kamath1:05:56

       But there is not one dominant player or three, four dominant players.

    8. SPSpeaker1:06:00

       India is so comp... heterogeneous hai, toh duniya chal rahi hai.

    9. SKSujeet Kumar1:06:03

       Customize bhi kar sakte hai.

    10. SPSpeaker1:06:03

        And woh jab bachcha paida hota hai, us din se shopping chalu ho jaati hai na. [chuckles]

    11. NKNikhil Kamath1:06:07

        But do you think it's an opportunity, weddings, wedding-

    12. SPSpeaker1:06:10

        People have, people have created, made that into a business.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar1:06:12

        But-

    14. SPSpeaker1:06:12

        Look at Manav as a brand now. He's, he's built on wedding.

    15. NKNikhil Kamath1:06:15

        Manav is wedding aggregation.

    16. SPSpeaker1:06:17

        And there might be many, many brands. Every city has brands.

    17. SKSujeet Kumar1:06:19

        Yeah, but still, i- if you look at fifteen lakh crore scale, and then you look at Manav-

    18. SPSpeaker1:06:23

        ...

    19. SKSujeet Kumar1:06:24

        It doesn't feel still proportionate, right?

    20. SPSpeaker1:06:26

        Ek Banaras mein. Manav toh humare khaas-

    21. SKSujeet Kumar1:06:27

        Haan. Ab unka dekhiye, sirf wedding hi chalta hai pure-

    22. SPSpeaker1:06:30

        Woh Banaras ka market wedding ka market hai. Pura UP wahan pe kharidne ko aata hai.

    23. NKNikhil Kamath1:06:35

        Wedding.

    24. SPSpeaker1:06:35

        So wedding, India mein consumption, uh, is driven by a lot of societal events. Look at, uh, the harvesting festival, wahan pe consumption ke, consumption used to happen during harvesting, which talks about your agricultural economy. Paise aate hai jab consumption hota hai kaafi, and usi time shadiyan hoti hai.

    25. NKNikhil Kamath1:06:49

        So aap next trend kya dekh rahe hai?

    26. SPSpeaker1:06:51

        I think like IT, sir, IT business, the technology business created, uh, around, uh, how many people? Nearly crore plus families would have got, uh-... into that business, and that created a lot of consumption. We need next round of, uh-

    27. NKNikhil Kamath1:07:06

        What do you think-

    28. SPSpeaker1:07:06

        economy -

    29. NKNikhil Kamath1:07:07

        - next round will be?

    30. SPSpeaker1:07:08

        I think we'll have to participate in something. I think a creative economy is a big economy, which is creator economy, creative economy. India can excel there also. We are fascinated by the generative AI, very, very fascinated. Imagine in retail business, in a grocery business, somebody will tell, "Okay, I want to make this item for the next five days." The retailer will give exact quantity of, uh, what you want. So the packaging will change, everything will change. So the-- any new technology will bring in so many changes, and the whole ecosystem around it changes.
20. 1:07:46 – 1:15:50

    Why do some products sell and others don't

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:07:46

       ask, what are the trends for the future and what do you see changing? But since you three have worked so much in this space, at the core of it, a product, why it sells? Like, why does something sell, and why does something not sell? If you had to provide insights from that, what would you say? Like, maybe you can start first.

    2. SPSpeaker1:08:10

       I think a product, uh, product, uh, sells because it fulfills the needs of the customer. So what we used to say is, there is a daily want and there is a daily need of a customer, and there is occasional want and occasional needs, so your product has to fit in somewhere. And there are occasional consumption and there are daily consumptions. So your product has to solve, uh, the needs of that customer, the wants of that customers. Secondly, product sells because, uh, you are fulfilling some vanity or some ego of that person if you are selling a high-value product there.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:08:43

       So how do you recognize these needs? If I'm somebody s- who wants to sell a product today, how will I get data on what cures somebody's ego or vanity? What is his need? How do I go about figuring out what product to design?

    4. SPSpeaker1:09:00

       I think the, the society is changing, the world is changing. Uh, you can look at, uh, what is getting popular. So, so like we always thought, uh, when OTT came in, and COVID made it happen, that people watched the longer form of storytelling. Nobody believed that storytelling can be told in ten, ten hours or twenty, twenty hours. Storytelling was supposed to be within less than three hours. It changed the whole market, I think the whole content market, the cinema, the multiplexes, it will undergo a significant change. So what, what now, what to produce with the customer or the audience likes? Today, the entire Hindi Bollywood film industry is struggling. There was a movie, I'm told, it didn't, uh, run even for a day. They had to take it out, and, uh, it's happening. This kind of mishaps are happening like crazy.

    5. VAVidit Aatrey1:09:47

       Yeah.

    6. SPSpeaker1:09:48

       And so what do you create for multiplex as a content? I think the-- everybody's getting into the drawing board, uh-

    7. VAVidit Aatrey1:09:54

       By the way, this is true for retail, very, very strongly I've seen. When the channel changes, what sells also changes.

    8. SPSpeaker1:10:00

       Yeah, absolutely.

    9. VAVidit Aatrey1:10:01

       Always.

    10. SPSpeaker1:10:02

        Absolutely.

    11. VAVidit Aatrey1:10:02

        Right? So because as soon as the channel changes, like, what you discover first... Like, for example, earlier, when you used to go offline, you will touch the product. That was a big part of what you buy. Now you can't do it, right? So suddenly, pricing takes a big-- Like I have seen online, pricing suddenly is a lot more important because touching quality is somehow it's very hard to pick. Now, merchandising, inspiration, photographs, social matters a lot, which was not there earlier. So as soon as channel changes, like, your-- what sells change, changes, like, completely. Now, internet was a big thing, mobile was a big thing. Now, AI, I don't know what that is, right? Like, AI's will also kind of change some of these channels.

    12. SPSpeaker1:10:45

        Absolutely.

    13. VAVidit Aatrey1:10:45

        Right? Meta was supposed to be, now it doesn't feel like gonna happen anytime soon. But if that happened-

    14. NKNikhil Kamath1:10:50

        Has a good-- has big potential in shopping?

    15. VAVidit Aatrey1:10:53

        Like, it should be. Like, if, if medium becomes large, by the way, then the channel, especially for shopping, will change.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath1:10:59

        But-

    17. VAVidit Aatrey1:10:59

        Then what you buy will be very different.

    18. NKNikhil Kamath1:11:01

        Like, if these guys, like Meta, with all the access to so much information, is spending fifteen billion dollars or sixteen billion dollars a year on creating that ecosystem, would you say it's likely that that will be the future?

    19. VAVidit Aatrey1:11:18

        It's, it's very hard, because historically, if you see, whenever big technology shifts come, they generally don't come from large company, they come from startups, right? So it's very hard that they will know what people need. Meta will know, right? Like, that's, uh... Like, every single time, all of these technologies have come, they've never come from existing large incumbents, right?

    20. NKNikhil Kamath1:11:36

        Mm-hmm.

    21. VAVidit Aatrey1:11:36

        So I find it unlikely it will happen. It may happen, like, who knows?

    22. SPSpeaker1:11:40

        But-

    23. VAVidit Aatrey1:11:40

        But historically, it's never been.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath1:11:43

        Right. Right, and what do you think-- Like I was asking him, like, what do you think is working today, and what do you think will work tomorrow when it comes to selling a product?

    25. VAVidit Aatrey1:11:56

        So I think, I-- again, my assessment is, this whole thing of serving need has become a lot more of serving aspirations now. As I was saying, most people come-

    26. NKNikhil Kamath1:12:06

        Is that because society is changing?

    27. VAVidit Aatrey1:12:07

        So both. People now have a lot more discretionary income, as people say. So it's not that when they want to buy, they buy. Now, people open the app, and they want to look like this celebrity or look like this influencer because they feel it's much better. And you fulfill their aspiration, they feel much more happier, right? So now I think some bit of the consumption started to happen-

    28. NKNikhil Kamath1:12:27

        And they're still talking about that fifteen, twenty crore population of India.

    29. VAVidit Aatrey1:12:31

        Like, so for example, just in the last twelve months, fourteen crore people have bought on Meesho. So I'm saying it's a large-

    30. SPSpeaker1:12:35

        They go to a much larger audience.
21. 1:15:50 – 1:19:33

    How different generations shop

    1. SKSujeet Kumar1:15:50

       it's very different. Like I was des- describing, Gen Zs are thinking in a very different way about, about their consumption. Um, millennials are definitely a bit thinking... And the other peop-- like traditional consump- consumer, who like price sensitive, quality, touch, and feel. I'll, I'll give one example. Gen Z was saying that: "Size matters too much to me. I will not going to buy online-

    2. NKNikhil Kamath1:16:19

       [speaking native language]

    3. SKSujeet Kumar1:16:19

       ... Like, this clothing size. Uh, sorry. Uh, so I'm not going to buy online, because for me, I'm buying and then returning again. I'd want it to look exactly fit like the celebrity. So for me, the price sensitivity is not that much. For me, these si- and offline gives me that flexibility. So I'll see here, but I wanted to buy the-- what I like offline, because that's where instant I, if I'm able to buy offline. So it's a different kind of ki- I never imagined, because there are so many policies we are saying, saying that, "Hey, I will return within five days, ten days. Again, uh, uh, fulfill." But no, no, it will not matter. For me, [coughs] it takes lots of time. E- either I should, um, order five, six sizes, then my money get stuck. The insight is, uh, like, uh, we have to be watch out where the consumers are build, uh, spending most of their time, and we have to build some of the products for according to that channel. So if you'll see, most of the evolution and tech will agree, has happened technology on back end, rationalizing the technology for applications like what to give to consumers, like pricing search, things like that, SKU search, cataloging, things like that. All those investment has happened in last fifteen years, I can at least say that, but nobody knows which channel is picking up. So I think that's where I'm saying now the time is to find a consumer, their money, where they are liking, what they are liking, every... Like my, for fashion, logically, it said, let's say social media is one of the most leading channels. But for consumer, uh, for, uh, consumer goods, like white goods, is it the performance? Is it the support? Is it the pricing? I don't know. Let's say buying AC on the social media is very hard to imagine. Mobile phone, I'm very clear because it's a feature-led, camera-led. Camera is dominating, let's say, mobile as a category, because that, that's the consideration set for, for new generation as well as for everyone.

    4. NKNikhil Kamath1:18:37

       Say, your son grows up in five years and he's shopping online.

    5. SKSujeet Kumar1:18:40

       I don't know. He will buy, like, in within game. He, he's playing so much there. [laughing] Uh, he, he can click, "I wanted to order this. I want it to look like this." I don't know. Honestly, might be that's not the main stream.

    6. NKNikhil Kamath1:18:54

       Right. Another question I wanted to ask is: when aggregation happens even in between platforms, like-... soon, maybe we will get to a point where Meesho is selling everything that is available, Amazon is selling everything that is available, Udaan, Flipkart, everybody. Will it come down to curation and legitimacy in a way, as to how I pick which platform to shop on?

    7. VAVidit Aatrey1:19:22

       By the way, it ends up being what your value prop is, right? So for example, Amazon is very, very focused on-

    8. NKNikhil Kamath1:19:30

       Tell me about everybody, because you're in this.

    9. VAVidit Aatrey1:19:32

       Uh.

    10. NKNikhil Kamath1:19:32

        Finish with

22. 1:19:33 – 1:21:43

    Amazon vs Flipkart

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:19:33

       Meesho. What is Amazon's value proposition?

    2. VAVidit Aatrey1:19:35

       Amazon's is, like, convenience. So I want to stand for convenience, right? So they will make sure that everything that you order, you always feel like it comes faster here as compared to anyone else.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:19:44

       But the flip side is that often the product is fake and the quality checks are not at par.

    4. VAVidit Aatrey1:19:49

       It could be, right? And that's, by the way, it's a, it's a thing that they'll continue to improve, but one thing they want to stand for, which is this: convenience, right? And everything else, if you ask me, is secondary. They'll continue to make some improvement, which not... You have to achieve excellence here, but they want to do this, so they want to stand for it. They will not sell anything where this somehow gets diluted. Because the brand, right, the value add that people remember you for is that. When they come to Meesho, people believe that this selection I will not get for, uh, a more affordable price anywhere else. Like, they have to believe this. And I will get the largest possible selection in the price points that I can afford. That I also have to believe. Now, everything that we do in our business, basically-

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:20:26

       And Flipcart?

    6. VAVidit Aatrey1:20:27

       Um, I, I don't know. I think it's a category-wise difference and maybe-

    7. NKNikhil Kamath1:20:31

       What is Flipkart and Amazon's distinction?

    8. SKSujeet Kumar1:20:34

       I think mostly you can-

    9. NKNikhil Kamath1:20:35

       For a long time, if I have to tell you the truth, I bought stuff on Flipkart out of some stupid notion that they're an Indian company and nationalism. But now after Walmart deal, I don't see any distinction between Flipkart and Walmart. I would just as well buy in Amazon as I might in Flipkart. How does Flipkart distinguish?

    10. SKSujeet Kumar1:20:55

        I think the DNA of the company, I can definitely talk about. [chuckles] I think we were building the company, then it was like how to give a best value proposition. Let's say price, service, let's say COD, building a logistic around that, something like that, right? Um-

    11. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:13

        So would you put that in the category of convenience and say Flipkart thought there is room for two players?

    12. SKSujeet Kumar1:21:19

        Pricing, price, like it's a good price-

    13. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:22

        Mm.

    14. SKSujeet Kumar1:21:22

        -at that. Uh, definitely, uh, price has a lots of aspects. I'm not going into that, but offering what Indian consumer wants. I think Amazon has a... like he is saying, that convenience, but that audience in bucket, even in bucket A, is very narrow.

    15. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:41

        What do you think of multiplexes?

23. 1:21:43 – 1:29:26

    Nikhil: Multiplexes aren't dead

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:43

       This is a good segue into a very interesting question.

    2. VAVidit Aatrey1:21:45

       I remember you owned a bit of multiplexes, no?

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:47

       I still have. I've reduced my shareholding, but I have about two percent, and I keep asking a lot of-

    4. SKSujeet Kumar1:21:53

       Of PVR.

    5. VAVidit Aatrey1:21:54

       I, I was on the board of Inox for a long time.

    6. NKNikhil Kamath1:21:56

       Yeah, now they have merged, PVR and, and Inox.

    7. SKSujeet Kumar1:21:58

       So you would know. You should tell us this, yeah? Like, you are interrogating us. I think you should also answer some of these. You tell us what's going to happen in multiplexes.

    8. NKNikhil Kamath1:22:04

       I'll tell you truly.

    9. VAVidit Aatrey1:22:05

       What were your belief and why you think [chuckles]

    10. NKNikhil Kamath1:22:09

        My tryst with multiplex companies started many years ago, okay? Like, maybe six or seven years ago, I had a very, very bearish outlook of them.

    11. VAVidit Aatrey1:22:20

        Six, seven years ago, pre-pandemic.

    12. NKNikhil Kamath1:22:22

        Much, much before pandemic. I shorted them to begin with, when, say, PVR was at thirteen hundred bucks, fourteen hundred bucks. There were a couple of policy changes which were happening. The foremost of them being, uh, it was in court that people will be allowed to bring outside food and water, and drink it inside the multiplex and eat it. And food as a income source for multiplexes is really high, as high as forty, forty-five percent. Then it changed pre-pandemic when I went long these companies, uh, because my reasoning changed to India, too, like Sud mentioned, is growing. In terms of entertainment for a family of four for three hours at sub thousand rupees in a safe, air-conditioned environment, the alternatives were not many. One could argue cricket is an alternative, but I thought as India, too, grows, the, the relevance of multiplex will go up. And they also become like these distribution hubs, which I don't think they have up until now. But if people are going there so often, it gives them the opportunity to do other kind of marketing, branding, advertising, all kinds of stuff. Where I sit today, I'm con- confused. Like everything else in my life, I'm in, uh... I'm shrouded in ambiguity on both sides because when I talk to people who, uh, say f- say when I talk to somebody who's the CEO of Hotstar, like, he's now the Bangalore guy, right? Like, Sujeet has become the CEO, the ex, uh, uh, Google Pay guy.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar1:24:04

        Sujeet is also our neighbor.

    14. NKNikhil Kamath1:24:07

        Yeah.

    15. SKSujeet Kumar1:24:07

        Yeah.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath1:24:07

        So he would give me an outlook of why OTT will kill traditional cinema. But then I talk to somebody like a UFO Movies, which is also another company I've invested in. They manage the technology around projecting a movie on the screen. There, I start to think the number of screens available, uh, the density of screens in India is still, like, much, much lower. Like, I would say in the US, there is one multiplex screen for thirty, forty thousand people. Uh, in China, maybe, uh, for a few hundred thousand people. In India, there is one screen for many, many hundreds of thousands of people. And to a large part of India, watching a movie is still going, you know, that truck comes, and on it there is a screen in the villages, and then everybody gets together with no kind of choice as to what content they get to watch. Uh, so for me-

    17. SKSujeet Kumar1:25:07

        ... But on this last point, like, as Kishore Ji was saying, like, anywhere where you use the population number is somewhat, right? Like per, per X number of people has a lot of India three, which skews this metric. How do you get to the right number?

    18. SPSpeaker1:25:21

        Secondly, secondly, people believe that India two wants to come into India one. I don't think so. Societally, uh, they don't look down-- They look down upon us. [chuckles]

    19. NKNikhil Kamath1:25:31

        I also think that's the right. [laughing] I feel like we follow or we try to follow on the path of the West and China so much by thinking that everybody moving into c-cities, all of this is good for the economy and growth and all of that. I personally believe, for many reasons, fragmentation is actually a model that could work better for today than it did for China twenty, thirty years ago.

    20. SPSpeaker1:25:57

        So, Nikhil, I want to say something on this multiplex thing. You know, when mobile phone came into the picture and everybody wanted to buy a mobile phone, where did the budget come from? They had to reduce some spend somewhere, and the biggest impact came on fashion, and we were a part of the fashion business then. And people were changing phone in the first six months. Everybody was changing phone much, much faster. Now it's, uh, slowed down. So what has happened? If you look at the multiplex industry, that money or spend, which was supposed to go to multiplexes, gapping to restaurants now. People are spending two and a half hours, family sitting together, friends sitting together and spending that one and a half thousand, two thousand rupees per head, and that money is clearly seen. People don't want to watch-

    21. SKSujeet Kumar1:26:39

        Yeah.

    22. NKNikhil Kamath1:26:39

        Can I ask you another question here?

    23. SPSpeaker1:26:41

        Mm-hmm.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath1:26:42

        Like the listed restaurant chains, you take Jubilant, you take Westlife, take the franchisees of big Western counterparts, right? Like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, all of that. They all command a significant premium to the market, right? They trade at... Let's say they're earning hundred rupees. Their valuation is seven thousand, eight thousand, in some cases twenty thousand, all of that. But the unlisted space in restaurants, what happens if somebody comes in and aggregates, like we spoke about Saravana Bhavan? There are so many of these in India, right? If somebody comes and aggregates a bunch of these chains, where the total sales comes up on par with, say, the Western counterparts, which have-

    25. SKSujeet Kumar1:27:31

        Dominos, let's put it like this.

    26. NKNikhil Kamath1:27:32

        Do you think there is an arbitrage between the valuation of this to that?

    27. SPSpeaker1:27:36

        But they don't need money now. Uh, Ramesh, why, why will you need money?

    28. SKSujeet Kumar1:27:41

        They don't-- They oh, refuse to talk.

    29. SPSpeaker1:27:43

        Impossible, because if you are a good business-

    30. SKSujeet Kumar1:27:45

        Come on call. [chuckles]
24. 1:29:26 – 1:34:36

    Why India isn't like the West

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:29:26

       but I like to believe that we live in a aspirational, capitalistic- [clears throat]

    2. SKSujeet Kumar1:29:32

       Correct

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:29:32

       ... ecosystem.

    4. SPSpeaker1:29:33

       Not as much as what we think.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:29:35

       Uh, but to a certain extent, we are capitalistic.

    6. SPSpeaker1:29:37

       There's no, there's no debate on that, but it's not as much as we think.

    7. NKNikhil Kamath1:29:41

       If somebody has the opportunity to expand and be a bigger winner in the cycle of capitalism, I think human tendis- tendency will persuade him in that direction eventually, at whatever pace, to whatever level of magnitude.

    8. SKSujeet Kumar1:29:56

       New food, uh, like, new thing is showing, but, like, I don't know the reason.

    9. SPSpeaker1:30:00

       Really, I, I, like, uh, I have, uh, my own experience in restaurant business. We were-- We came in too early, like a Silsila movie. It was a little ahead of time. We [laughing]

    10. NKNikhil Kamath1:30:08

        I like your movie analogy. [chuckles]

    11. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:09

        Yeah, yeah.

    12. SPSpeaker1:30:11

        So [clears throat] most of the chain in Bombay.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:14

        Ah.

    14. SPSpeaker1:30:15

        Bombay Blues, Noodle Bar, Copper Chimney.

    15. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:17

        I, I got it.

    16. SPSpeaker1:30:18

        Uh, Sports Bar.

    17. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:19

        Ahead of time. Ahead of time.

    18. SPSpeaker1:30:22

        Both ahead of time, and how much money we lost, we only know.

    19. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:25

        But now I think-

    20. SPSpeaker1:30:26

        Now, but restaurant, the problem is the per capita expenditure of building a restaurant is very high, and the s-- and the life, the life of a restaurant-

    21. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:33

        I'm talking about QSR now. I'm not... It's in bullshit.

    22. SPSpeaker1:30:35

        QSR, then you're doing very successful.

    23. SKSujeet Kumar1:30:37

        Yeah.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath1:30:39

        Is that why the franchise model with so much standardization do better?

    25. SPSpeaker1:30:43

        Then all this industrialization of a, uh-

    26. NKNikhil Kamath1:30:46

        That's a QSR.

    27. SPSpeaker1:30:47

        Yeah. Not all QSRs, in a way. Mm.

    28. NKNikhil Kamath1:30:50

        Most of it.

    29. SPSpeaker1:30:51

        Yeah, most of it.

    30. NKNikhil Kamath1:30:52

        Let's say if I like Rameshwaram, for me, it will be the QSR, if I'll going to scale it.
25. 1:34:36 – 1:43:43

    Kishore Biyani's philosophy + life advice

    1. SPSpeaker1:34:36

       life is a series of events.

    2. NKNikhil Kamath1:34:37

       Hmm.

    3. SPSpeaker1:34:38

       And, uh, you have to enjoy, relish, cherish every event which comes in. Some events will be very heart-pleasing, and some events will be not so great. But I think the fun is, uh, having all kind of events. So if you look at my life, uh, like, we grew at thirty percent. Life was unbelievably... Well, uh, we, it was up, up, up only. So the, the lower-

    4. NKNikhil Kamath1:35:05

       Yeah

    5. SPSpeaker1:35:05

       ... the lower side was much, much lower.

    6. NKNikhil Kamath1:35:07

       This is, like, a tough question. I don't know if I should even ask it or not, but in that thirty percent growth cycle, let's assume two or three things went wrong, right? Like, what do you think... I believe that in life there are two buckets of things: one you can control, another you can't control. For what you can't control, there's no point, like, breaking your head over it. Uh, just as advice to us who are, like, entrepreneurs or budding ones and all people around, what do you think went wrong? What caused it, and if you had to do it over again, what might you change?

    7. SPSpeaker1:35:50

       So I, I think I'm a-- as a personality, I'm a little impulsive person. So what went wrong is basically growing, uh, on debt and, uh, not building a strong balance sheet. So that is one thing which was apparent. Third, I, I then... I, I, my daughter just, just started studying Shakespeare. So other day-

    8. NKNikhil Kamath1:36:15

       Hmm

    9. SPSpeaker1:36:15

       ... some ten days back, she came out of the class, and she called me up. I had one of my best day of my life. I studied a concept of storytelling called the tragic flaw. So every character which Shakespeare built had a flaw in that, and he used to highlight that flaw and that character. Then I started looking at Ramayana, Mahabharata, and everybody had a flaw, but flaw in India was never highlighted as much. We were taught that, uh, everybody is perfect, so everybody has a fatal flaw. I converted this tragic flaw into a fatal flaw, and I started analyzing my fatal flaw, and I was able to discover a lot. So [chuckles] I, I... And everybody has that flaw. And every- I believe every entrepreneur has a some flaw, uh, which I think which should be taught, and, and if somebody can work on it, they'll make less number of mistakes and will be more successful. So I have gone through flaws and flaws and flaws.

    10. VAVidit Aatrey1:37:10

        ... So how do we discover that fatal flaw for us?

    11. NKNikhil Kamath1:37:12

        All psychology says this, like, if you go through Jung, Freud, Adler, like much after Shakespeare's time, obviously, but we are all flawed, right? We're all insecure. We're all, uh, not altruistic, like we might like to believe at some level, or we might like to portray. There is one true us. There is one persona of us which we have created in our own mind, which we believe is not flawed, that persona. And we spend so much time and effort defending that persona and denying our flaw, that it makes life more complicated, even for us and for people around us. So different people call it different thing. I think people like Jung and Adler call it our sha-shadow. Uh, it is driven by many things, like your childhood had-- has such a big impact on it. Like what you did between ages three, four to eight, nine, will have so much to do with what your shadow is today. The financial condition of your parents, the relationship between your mother and father, your relationship with your siblings, and also innately how you're born as a person. So every psychology, uh, book kind of tells you that, recognize your flaws. They, in fact, help you out by doing some categorization. They say, "This could be a certain kind of person. That could be a certain kind of person."

    12. SPSpeaker1:38:38

        But, Nikhil, this should be taught to entrepreneurs. And, and you can find, like, I, uh, like, I have a very simple philosophy of life, that music has seven ... There are five primary colors, and there are nine recorded emotions of human beings. Life is not so complex. So if you look at the flaws of entrepreneurs, I think it can be defined very well. And there are people like me, who-- or many people like us, who have made a lot of mistakes, and how can it be recorded and taught?

    13. NKNikhil Kamath1:39:04

        Especially for entrepreneurs, "" hamara aur ek problem yeh hai ki, uh, we all have gotten lucky in the cycle of life. See, we're all sitting here outside of [beep] because we've gotten very lucky, right? I mean, Vidit is brilliant, Sujeet is brilliant, you're brilliant, but at some level, luck has played, played a disproportionate part of how we arrived to be where we are today. But the problem, especially in startup crowds, is because somebody goes from A to Z in two years, in three years, in five years, in six years, you don't start to take yourself so seriously, but the scale of everything you're saying and doing is so much bigger, that what you were saying and doing five years ago, today will be looked at through a completely different lens. So even for that reason, I think what he said is so true, that we need to like... I know introspecting is the hardest thing in life, maybe, but-

    14. VAVidit Aatrey1:39:59

        And that's what I was going to ask, like, how do you find these fatal flaws? I'm sure, like you now have some ways-

    15. SPSpeaker1:40:04

        After destruction, you can easily find it, yeah. [laughing] Secondly, you are open to it. I think, uh, we always created an organization which allowed dissent, so that was not the challenge. Secondly, we never kept along ourselves, uh, our echo chambers, never in our life. So everybody knows your weakness. Anybody who's around you will know your weakness.

    16. VAVidit Aatrey1:40:24

        You should ask them.

    17. SPSpeaker1:40:24

        They know how to... No, they will never tell you your weakness ever.

    18. NKNikhil Kamath1:40:27

        Yeah, yeah.

    19. SPSpeaker1:40:28

        But-

    20. VAVidit Aatrey1:40:28

        So how do we get it out then?

    21. SPSpeaker1:40:30

        Khud ko introspection karna padega.

    22. NKNikhil Kamath1:40:31

        The first thing to do is normalize having flaws.

    23. SPSpeaker1:40:35

        Yeah.

    24. NKNikhil Kamath1:40:35

        The problem with-

    25. SPSpeaker1:40:36

        Yes

    26. NKNikhil Kamath1:40:36

        ... social media and anonymity, what it has done is people go out there and say [beep] about everybody. Like, one should not care, but in many cases, you find yourself caring. But until we come to terms with the fact that you are flawed, Sujeet is flawed, he's flawed, I'm flawed. Until we realize that we each are, and then we realize that we all are, I think people will be scared and shy of coming out with their flaws.

    27. VAVidit Aatrey1:41:00

        By the way, ispe I have one disagreement, which is I believe most entrepreneurs are very paranoid also. So they believe something's going to go wrong at all points in time, ke woh kya hai? And, and that's why I feel like if you tell them there's something wrong, "Han, I can do this," and basically fixing this would mean something will grow, and then-

    28. SPSpeaker1:41:16

        Mein toh-

    29. VAVidit Aatrey1:41:16

        all of that happens. But I generally feel people are-

    30. SPSpeaker1:41:19

        This is not what the flaw--
26. 1:43:43 – 1:49:24

    ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) explained

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:43:43

       who's going to explain it? Is it life-changing for anybody trying to build a product in e-commerce? What do you think will happen to ONDC going forward? I think you, especially, more than all people, 'cause you have these tiny mom-and-pop kind of stores who come specifically sell on Meesho. Can you explain?

    2. VAVidit Aatrey1:44:07

       Yeah. So for people who don't know ONDC, ONDC basically-

    3. SPSpeaker1:44:10

       We got a lesson today a little bit, yeah. [laughing]

    4. VAVidit Aatrey1:44:12

       Before this meeting, when you were late, we were watching that.

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:44:15

       Oh, achha.

    6. VAVidit Aatrey1:44:16

       Ah, so I'm saying it's a, it's, it's a government initiative trying to onboard all kinds of small businesses on a platform and make all kinds of small businesses, be it kirana, et cetera, basically come online and really unbundle the entire value chain, right? I really believe the vision and the mission there is quite powerful because you still don't find any panwadi, et cetera, selling products online around you, right? Very, very... India has about sixty million small businesses. About million, million and a half only sell anything online. So now you can say eventually, how many will do or don't do? I don't know. You look at Southeast Asia, e-commerce there started four years after India. About fifteen million people who sell onli- online just in Indonesia. India is still million, million and a half. So I think there's a problem to be solved. I, I hope that ONDC is the answer. We've integrated with them. Hopefully, that will solve, but still very early.

    7. NKNikhil Kamath1:45:14

       In very simple words, like, if you were to dumb it down for me, if I am a seller who makes soaps, theek hai?

    8. VAVidit Aatrey1:45:22

       Correct.

    9. NKNikhil Kamath1:45:23

       After ONDC, how does my life change?

    10. VAVidit Aatrey1:45:26

        So I think it's more interop. So basically, they say it's like the UPI of e-commerce. It's supposed to be that, which is anyone-- You can upload your catalog on any app, and it'll start to appear on all other apps which are integrated with ONDC. So that's how it's supposed to be. It's an interoperable e-commerce platform.

    11. NKNikhil Kamath1:45:44

        Till today, I was putting it on Meesho. Tomorrow, when I put my soap on Meesho, will it automatically show up on Flipkart?

    12. VAVidit Aatrey1:45:52

        It should, if everything is on ONDC. That's the goal.

    13. SPSpeaker1:45:54

        Integrated.

    14. NKNikhil Kamath1:45:55

        So-

    15. SPSpeaker1:45:56

        I have, I have a very in... I want to ask you a question. So you all, you all believe that, uh, India, people are still hungry and thirsty, they are not getting anything, and they will start getting it from this?

    16. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:07

        I, I don't know.

    17. SPSpeaker1:46:09

        Consumption will increase.

    18. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:10

        Because supply follows demand. The problem is this, right?

    19. SPSpeaker1:46:14

        Supply...

    20. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:14

        The supply follows demand.

    21. SPSpeaker1:46:15

        There, right?

    22. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:15

        Yes, that's what I'm saying, where there is money, there is demand. So supply follows demand.

    23. SPSpeaker1:46:19

        But those who, those who have to consume two hundred SQ, they will get two hundred SQ somewhere or the other, they will get it at home, they will get it somewhere. So...

    24. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:26

        I'll give you an example, because this happens so gradually, na?

    25. SPSpeaker1:46:30

        Consumption will not increase.

    26. VAVidit Aatrey1:46:31

        But this happens so gradually, people don't understand. But if you look at pandemic, where things happened, like, very quickly, right? So suddenly, for a year, nothing was selling offline. And you meet any small business in India, like, people are like: "Oh, shit, people used to come to me and say, 'Sell online,' and I did not do, and now I can't just put f- food on the table at my household," right? So I'm saying, at that point in time, every small business in India realized they want to be online. And to some extent, by the way, informally, a lot of them are online because they sell on WhatsApp. So you can say that panwadi also sends you-

    27. SPSpeaker1:47:01

        Yeah

    28. VAVidit Aatrey1:47:01

        ... whatever you want on a WhatsApp, right? They even-- Are they selling online? Maybe, yes. But still, like, quite hidden in some unstructured platforms, they haven't come online, and they can't get access to a lot of demand that people who are selling online are getting to.

    29. SPSpeaker1:47:15

        Like he was saying, that it is a digitization-

    30. NKNikhil Kamath1:47:17

        It's shifting, it's shifting.
27. 1:49:24 – 1:53:09

    Nykaa discussion - the only publicly listed Indian e-commerce brand

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:49:24

       into e-commerce, there aren't many opportunities. Flipkart is owned by Walmart. They're not listed here. One can argue you can buy Walmart shares in America, but that would [clears throat] diversify you too much. The only option I would say, arguably, is Nykaa, where you can get a piece of the e-commerce pie in India, in the listed space. Uh, what do you guys think of Nykaa, the business model of Nykaa, and what do you think will happen to Nykaa going forward? I know they're your competition, but-

    2. VAVidit Aatrey1:49:57

       No, we are not, by the way. I, I believe it's a very different business.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:50:00

       Yeah.

    4. VAVidit Aatrey1:50:01

       Like, we are a platform, they're a brand. So I think it's-

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:50:03

       Are they a brand? Because they're not-- They're distributing third-party products.

    6. SPSpeaker1:50:06

       Yeah, but still they are a brand.

    7. VAVidit Aatrey1:50:08

       They're a brand.

    8. SPSpeaker1:50:09

       Well, uh, look at Amazon as a brand. It's a brand. Flipkart is a brand. Nykaa is a brand. Meesho is also a brand. They have worked on building the brand. So-

    9. VAVidit Aatrey1:50:17

       Yeah, but my, my... Still, my thing was, like, they-- A lot of what they do offline, online, the kind of products they sell, a lot of products are exclusive. So basically-

    10. NKNikhil Kamath1:50:28

        But vast majority of what they sell-

    11. VAVidit Aatrey1:50:30

        Uh.

    12. NKNikhil Kamath1:50:30

        Let's say they do four thousand crores of business a year, let's say five percent margin kind of business, uh, operating margin or net margin five percent. But most of what they sell is third-party products that they are distributing.

    13. VAVidit Aatrey1:50:47

        Uh, so that's why I think my understanding of the business could also be limited. But from what I've seen, how they've approached it, a lot of that business has been built by getting supply that you won't get everywhere, right? So they've been much more focused on going very deep into that particular category and making it happen. If, if, by the way, you can get the same supply that you have on Nykaa, you have on Am-- you can get on Amazon, and they'll ship, like, the next day, why won't you buy from there? And it should not happen, right? But it does not.

    14. NKNikhil Kamath1:51:13

        If somebody is buying, are they betting into the story of India two growing significantly and India one growing as well?

    15. SPSpeaker1:51:21

        But, uh, but the woman child is getting, uh, getting into beauty even in India, too, in a very significant way. So there is some budget of the family going into beauty. Beauty as a category is also growing significantly.

    16. NKNikhil Kamath1:51:37

        That's actually a very interesting question. Let's-

    17. VAVidit Aatrey1:51:38

        But India, too, by the way, in terms of beauty, ends up being lipstick, nail polish-

    18. SPSpeaker1:51:42

        Whatever-

    19. VAVidit Aatrey1:51:42

        ... or foundation.

    20. SPSpeaker1:51:43

        But that's also three category, three SKUs, not small.

    21. VAVidit Aatrey1:51:46

        Uh, but it's very-

    22. SPSpeaker1:51:47

        Three, four, five, it will-

    23. NKNikhil Kamath1:51:48

        How does one ev-evaluate something like Nykaa? How does one benchmark? I'm asking because you both are in e-commerce. You've had Flipkart, Udaan, you have Meesho. If I'm an investor trying to figure out, I should invest in the company. Like, I think Falguni is an exceptional entrepreneur. I know her, and I think if anybody can pull it off, it's possibly or likely her. Uh, she's had an exceptional past and great management and all of those things. But the broader question is: How big is the e-commerce pie in India? And are we betting... Based on the valuations of whatever I mentioned, are we betting that India one and two will grow to X percentage in the next five years or ten years? Is that the bet we are making?

    24. VAVidit Aatrey1:52:37

        Yeah, I've-- I don't know the answer to that question, and I won't even attempt. But what I know is I don't think that company is a good representation of India e-commerce, because it's very narrow in a category and very narrow in terms of the customer base they serve. Their average order value, if I remember, was some fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, two thousand, something like that.

    25. SPSpeaker1:52:54

        It's not less, yeah.

    26. VAVidit Aatrey1:52:55

        Uh.

    27. SPSpeaker1:52:55

        But it's not-

    28. VAVidit Aatrey1:52:56

        It's quite high. It's very high. So my point is, it's super high. So the segment exposure and category exposure cannot be a representation of the e-commerce market. That's what I believe.

    29. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:06

        Okay, let's talk about Meesho.

    30. VAVidit Aatrey1:53:08

        Uh.
28. 1:53:09 – 1:57:51

    Meesho's valuation

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:09

       make it more interesting. What is your valuation today?

    2. VAVidit Aatrey1:53:12

       Valuation today? My, our valuation, this is the last one, was about five billion.

    3. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:16

       Okay, and, uh, give us some metrics, like some numbers, and whatever is publicly available.

    4. VAVidit Aatrey1:53:21

       Yeah, something we have about fourteen crore people who buy from us every year, about a million small businesses. Um, in the last one year, we did about one billion orders, which is, what? Hundred crore. That's... So about a hundred crore orders in the last twelve months, um-

    5. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:34

       Those are insane numbers, by the way.

    6. SPSpeaker1:53:35

       Insane numbers.

    7. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:36

       Right? Fourteen crore people buying, huh.

    8. VAVidit Aatrey1:53:38

       Yeah, and, and by the way, we sell across. So horizontal platform, people come and sell anything they want. So about half is apparel and half is non-apparel, and that includes kids, beauty, personal care, your electronics, home and kitchen.

    9. NKNikhil Kamath1:53:52

       What is the GMV, like the gross sales that happen on?

    10. VAVidit Aatrey1:53:56

        Yeah, so about, like, last twenty-twenty calendar year was about four, four and a half, quarter to five billion. Um, so which is last year.

    11. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:05

        And what is the margin on the top level? Out of this five billion you sell, on average, how much margin do you have?

    12. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:13

        [speaking Hindi] Why do you wanna open my PNL in front of me here right now? [laughing]

    13. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:17

        Right. Right.

    14. SPSpeaker1:54:19

        I think [speaking Hindi] dealing with that kind of customers.

    15. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:24

        Right, but ticket size [speaking Hindi]

    16. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:26

        Three twenty. And that's the... I'm saying that's the problem we have to solve. Like, so I-

    17. SPSpeaker1:54:29

        That's the biggest problem.

    18. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:30

        Correct.

    19. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:30

        What would that be for Flipkart?

    20. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:32

        It would be much higher. Again, twelve hundred, thirteen hundred, maybe higher.

    21. SPSpeaker1:54:35

        Thousand, yeah.

    22. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:36

        Because [speaking Hindi] electronics, mobile phone takes the average order value quite high.

    23. SPSpeaker1:54:40

        Plus, um, plus Myntra, [speaking Hindi]

    24. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:45

        We didn't answer-

    25. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:46

        Integrated that.

    26. NKNikhil Kamath1:54:46

        We didn't answer the Nykaa thing. What are the final thoughts on a company like Nykaa? 'Cause I don't have another listed player in mind. [chuckles]

    27. SPSpeaker1:54:54

        What's your interest? [laughing]

    28. VAVidit Aatrey1:54:56

        No, I said, like... I said, I don't know about the company, but I, I don't believe it represents India e-commerce, but-

    29. SPSpeaker1:55:02

        No, but that's okay. I, I believe it's, uh, it's picked up the right category at the right time. And secondly, they build their own strength of the content to commerce. I think it was a very interesting way they built it. Uh, there are negatives that, uh, they have attracted attention and too many players are coming in. Uh, they need to-

    30. SKSujeet Kumar1:55:27

        ... uh, build their own, uh, brand and the ecosystem, which they might be doing. They went into too many things now, or they went into B2B. But I was surprised that even, uh, the-- I never thought that beauty and fashion as an adjacency will work as much, but, uh, Nykaa is not doing bad on fashion.
29. 1:57:51 – 2:04:09

    How to get into e-commerce and the future of selling online

    1. NKNikhil Kamath1:57:51

       I be in e-commerce, or is the market too saturated?

    2. SKSujeet Kumar1:57:55

       As a career?

    3. SKSujeet Kumar1:57:56

       For-- to start a platform?

    4. NKNikhil Kamath1:57:57

       As a career.

    5. SKSujeet Kumar1:57:58

       Start a platform or to be a mer-

    6. SKSujeet Kumar1:57:59

       Commerce, huh? There's no other option but to be a part of it.

    7. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:02

       Yeah.

    8. NKNikhil Kamath1:58:03

       Yeah.

    9. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:03

       I think being part of e-commerce-

    10. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:05

        Everything

    11. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:05

        ... the only way is not to be a platform, right?

    12. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:07

        Yeah.

    13. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:07

        Like, now, all the D2C brands are part of e-commerce.

    14. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:10

        Yeah, they are all e-commerce.

    15. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:11

        And everyone-- So the beautiful thing that has happened because of e-commerce platforms is now personalization and localization, that can happen. Like, it was not possible ago.

    16. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:21

        Mm.

    17. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:21

        So now people are, like, finding very niche and basically serving them. So you only get discovered with a particular search term, and people buy you again and again. So I'm saying lots of these micro D2C brands are possible. So I'm saying, being part of e-commerce, everything that you do around selling digital products is being part of e-commerce. And I believe it will only accelerate because there's no other way anymore.

    18. NKNikhil Kamath1:58:42

        Hamari duniya mein, right? Like, especially us three living in Bangalore, we're all from this... We're all products of a startup bubble which started-

    19. SKSujeet Kumar1:58:51

        Bubble [chuckles]

    20. NKNikhil Kamath1:58:51

        -last decade. And I think to be fair, like, we were talking about knowing your fa- flaws, I think we are cognizant to the fact that we are byproducts of a startup bubble. What happens to e-commerce once the deep discounting, in a way, or the marketing money, which was funded by cheap cost of capital abroad, goes away? Like, how do things change? Let's say there is no funding available for growth for Indian e-commerce companies in the next three years-

    21. SKSujeet Kumar1:59:28

        Mm

    22. NKNikhil Kamath1:59:29

        ... and they have to survive with the money they have left. How does each one change?

    23. SKSujeet Kumar1:59:36

        In my mind, it's a very hypothetical question. But I think, look, when you are building a business, you know that this much of money you need. Let's say plus, minus, you can say that. I think only you can say that, "Hey, growth is the right metrics." If you are growing, then investing money, even though, let's say profitability comes after, let's say, four or five-

    24. SKSujeet Kumar1:59:59

        I don't agree, I don't agree.

    25. SKSujeet Kumar2:00:01

        Hear, hear me out. Hear me out. I understand. Uh, uh, uh, but if you are with those unit i- in your boundaries, you are capturing the market share and growing, I think I am in, in that kind of a student where I'll support that. But burning money and hurting the company... Like, you burn money, you get the GMV.

    26. NKNikhil Kamath2:00:26

        See, but see-

    27. SKSujeet Kumar2:00:26

        And but your, uh, unit economy is not holding.

    28. NKNikhil Kamath2:00:29

        Your-

    29. SKSujeet Kumar2:00:29

        You should not do that.

    30. NKNikhil Kamath2:00:30

        But you're-
30. 2:04:09 – 2:08:12

    Concluding thoughts

    1. SPSpeaker2:04:09

       anybody looking to get involved in e-commerce? Final thoughts. So when I look at, uh, D2C brands, it was, uh, D2C brands are something like, uh, you are living in a neighborhood and you open a shop, and you start from there, and from there you grow and open to a much-- it allows you to open to a much, much larger audiences. So that's the way forward. Uh, you can't now go and open a shop below your building. It's great to get into digital commerce, and if you're lucky, and if you do well, if you're passionate, I think it's a great business to be in.

    2. VAVidit Aatrey2:04:52

       I believe there's no other way, right? So I believe, as I think we started in the beginning, the definitions between e-commerce, commerce, offline commerce are getting blurred more and more. So if you wanna do anything in commerce, you have to basically figure out how to make e-commerce work. This holds true for anyone who's starting a business today. So I think if you wanna create value, I think you will become a part of this. So I think instead of asking, "Should I become part of this?" Question is: what do I need to do to really, really become successful at this? And I believe that will happen. Like social, figuring out influencers, figuring out everything else, figuring out marketplaces.

    3. SKSujeet Kumar2:05:32

       I, I think contrary, it has integrated them. Because you get the same product, same thing. Earlier, when people defined that when offline, hey, you will get something in Delhi or in Mumbai or in big cities, you'll not get in Tier 2 or in... Now, e-commerce made it every product is available everywhere.

    4. SPSpeaker2:05:49

       We all agree that's become a very relevant part, right? Figuring out-

    5. SKSujeet Kumar2:05:51

       Very big, yeah

    6. SPSpeaker2:05:53

       ... to sell anything. Hmm.

    7. VAVidit Aatrey2:05:56

       So I think if you are doing commerce, online will happen for sure. Some people will do hybrid as well, but I'm also seeing... So for example, forty percent of sellers on Meesho are online-only sellers. They don't sell anywhere else. So they have basic- they became entrepreneurs for the first time because they figured out, "Hey, I can go on this platform. I figure I know how to merchandise well, how to price well, how to figure out what trends work on this marketplace," and so on. So people are creating businesses, basically. So I think that will happen more and more. Lots of online native sellers will come, and they would have never known what does it mean to sell offline.

    8. SKSujeet Kumar2:06:36

       I, I believe, [coughs] let's say, I can only, uh, finding the similarity when we have started, let's say, two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. The internet at that time was not even the main channel. Only eight million people having the broadband and the internet access at that time, two thousand and eight. Uh, but I think taking that punt is the internet is a mes- most powerful thing, and people have evolved. Like social, I believe the twenty-year guy will understand much better than me, and because when we have to learn, talk to him. And finally, commerce definitely doesn't matter which channel, but it will going to happen and adopted in a most evolving way. I believe the social influencers and all are a great channel. How to get use of that in... Look, I'm not talking about supply chain, I'm not talking about inventory. Those are given. If you wanted to transport one physical goods, those will come into play, and somewhere it's, it's solving or solved, it's evolving in own pace. But getting into the consumer side of it, where the consumers' minds are, be part of that and see how, how one can be, uh, do those commerce transaction, uh, how to influence. I think that's the advice. I... And, and new channels already are emerging.

    9. SPSpeaker2:07:52

       Super. Great. Thank you everyone for watching.

    10. SKSujeet Kumar2:07:54

        Thank you.

    11. SPSpeaker2:07:54

        Thank you, Kishore, Vidit, and Sujeet.

    12. VAVidit Aatrey2:07:57

        Thanks.

    13. SPSpeaker2:07:57

        Cheers, everyone.

    14. SKSujeet Kumar2:07:58

        Thanks for hosting us.

    15. SPSpeaker2:07:59

        Great. [upbeat music] Hi, I'm Nikhil. Uh, thank you for watching the podcast. Let us know who your favorite guest has been and who you'd like to watch next. Thank you. [outro music]

Episode duration: 2:08:12