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

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

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

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

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

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

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]

[laughing]

...

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

Uh.

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

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

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

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

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

What do you say then? We have-

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

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

You know, at this age. [laughing]

[laughing]

...

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

Yeah, yeah.

Thoda hat ke.

Basically, you have to say the absolute blatant truth.

Ah, so-

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

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-

What was everyone else doing?

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-

Parchoon ki dukaan kya hoti hai?

Which is a kirana shop, basically.

Kirana shop. Hmm.

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.